Better to Be Fake and Happy
by MewWinx96
Summary: Eleanor Braden has had enough of life. All she wants to do is drink herself to death. However, when her suicide plans are inadvertently thwarted by Murphy MacManus, she must work to continue to pretend to be the normal, happy person that everyone thinks she is while trying to come to terms with the event that led her to attempt to take her own life. (M for language, violence)
1. Rain Down and Destroy Me

**Now, ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy my first attempt at writing _Boondock Saints_ fanfiction.**

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 **Disclaimer (and this is the only one you're getting): The following is a work of fan fiction. All recognizable characters are the property of Stage 6 Films, 12 Gauge Comics, and (sadly) Troy Duffy. All rights go to them and any relevant third parties I may have forgotten to mention.**

 **The title of this fic is a selection from a quote by Evangeline Lilly. All credit goes to her.**

 **The cover art used for this fic is a work by Pietro Longhi and is part of the Public Domain.**

 **This fic is rated M for intense crude language, descriptions of violence, abuse of alcohol and not acting responsibly while under the influence of alcohol, situations of domestic violence, and characters either implicating or outright expressing the desire to commit suicide. I do not think any of this goes into MA territory (in fact, I don't think the language or the violence is anything you wouldn't see in the movie), but if any of these things bother you, you probably shouldn't read this story. This is the only warning you're getting.**

* * *

 **Monday, November 7th, 1994**

"I don't get why I'm getting suspended." Ellie adjusted the make-shift rib-eye steak icepack over her left eye. "I mean, that fat bitch Michelle's the one who hit **me** , not the other way around." Lori whirled around, fire in her hazel eyes which she narrowed them at the fourteen-year-old.

"First of all, you use that type of language with me again, you'll have more than one month's grounding to worry about." Ellie audibly gulped. "Second of all, you know the school has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind. You've gotten into three fights so far this year, and it isn't even December yet."

"I didn't start any of those fights, though," Ellie complained. "They always threw the first punch. I was just defending myself."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Then why did seven of your classmates testify that you were verbally trying to goad her into the fight?" Lori gave her a pointed look that made Ellie squirm.

"Okay," Ellie relented. "I **may** have said a few things to set her off."

"They said you used several derogatory slurs and implied that she partakes in acts of lesbianism."

"Implied…" Ellie sat up, her perplexed expression clear. "I just said 'come at me you carpet-eating whore.' How does that imply that she's a lesbian?"

"That's not the point!" Lori was clearly becoming frustrated.

"I mean, everyone knows that she's not," Ellie said. "After all, that sex tape she made with…"

"Eleanor Lilith, test my patience one more time, you're going to be grounded for the rest of the year." Ellie's face blanched and her heart dropped.

"I'm sorry." Her apology came out quietly and Lori gave no indication as to whether she heard it. The woman paced around the living room for a few minutes but eventually came to set herself down in an armchair sitting just a few feet from the couch. She rested her elbows on her knees and pinched her nose.

"You know this isn't funny, right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You know you can't be picking fights with random people."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You know you're going to be grounded for this for a really long time."

"Yes, ma'am." Lori let out a huff of frustration as she rubbed her palm over her nose and across her forehead.

"Maybe that psychologist was right." The words sounded utterly defeated as they came out of the woman's mouth. "Maybe you do have RAD."

"I don't have RAD." Ellie laid back down and squeezed her free eye shut. She did not want to have this conversation again right now.

"Ellie, we've been over this so many times." Lori practically groaned. "It's perfectly normal for someone to come out of the system with difficulties getting attached to and forming new relationships with other people."

"I have no problem with you," Ellie pointed out. "Or Charley, or Tyler, or Julie, or Mabel. Plus, I wasn't even in the system that long."

"But you do continually antagonize and get into fights with other people." Ellie couldn't disagree with that. "Something needs to be done to get you under control before you end up expelled from school, and don't say you'll 'try harder' or you'll 'just ignore them' because you've promised me that before and you've never come through."

"I'm sorry." Lori sighed as she stood up.

"Listen, I'll talk to your counselor, see if she has any recommendations for what we should do." Ellie gave a weak nod in agreement. "In the meantime, young lady, you are grounded. No TV, no phone calls, no magazines… Nothing that makes you happy for the rest of the month."

"Really? Because I'd like to take this moment to remind you of how much spinach makes me happy."

"Oh, that's wonderful to hear, given that's what we're having with the pork roast tonight." Ellie suppressed the urge to groan as Lori walked out of the living room.

* * *

 **Saturday, November 12th, 1994**

Ellie pulled her jacket closer around her as she shivered against the cold. She was sitting outside on the curb of the community rec center, waiting for Lori or Charley or whoever to come and pick her up. Her counselor suggested going to a support group with other teens who were in the foster care system or were adopted. She decided to slip out halfway through when everyone was distracted by the refreshments table. She didn't like it. All the kids seemed halfway suicidal, and all the adults just seemed to take pity on them. If Ellie had to bet, she'd guess that most of the adults were just there as part of their court-ordered community service. No one's just a good person because they want to be.

Looking at her watch, Ellie sighed. She had at least another thirty minutes before someone came to get her. She wondered if she had enough time to run to the 7-Eleven down the street and grab something but decided against it. Newton might be a nicer town than some other places in this state, but it didn't make it any less stupid of an idea to wander off somewhere alone. Bad things could happen anywhere, no matter what some liked to fool themselves into believing.

Just as she thought that Ellie's own mind quickly came back to haunt her. Footsteps were slowly approaching her, leaving a cold feeling of fear in the middle of her gut. The person eventually came to a stop a few feet behind her. She heard a few clicking sounds before a quiet utterance of "shit."

"Hey kid," an unfamiliar male voice said. "You got a light?"

"A what?" Ellie turned to look back at the shadowy figure and was completely frightened by what she saw. It was a man who had about a foot and one hundred pounds on her. He wasn't fat, but muscular. If it came down to it, he'd take her down in a fight easily. It would be naïve to think otherwise.

"A light," the figure repeated. "A lighter. I'm trying to light up this cigarette but for some reason, my lighter stopped working."

"I don't smoke." She could have left it at that, but Ellie just had to add "I'm only fourteen." She instantly began mentally berating herself. Ellie was told never to give personal information about herself to strangers, including her age. After all, she could be staring down the next Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacey.

To her surprise, the person only laughed and took a couple steps further, so he was visible to the street lights. Despite his large, intimidating figure, his facial features suggested that he was much closer to her own age.

"I'm not old enough to smoke either," he said. "Doesn't stop me."

"Well, it does stop me." Ellie turned to stare back out into the dark abyss of the parking lot.

"What?" The boy said. "You a health nut or something? Gonna give me a lecture about how smoking kills?"

"Nope," Ellie said, popping the "p". "It's your life, live it however you wanna. You want to drive yourself to an early grave by inhaling a dose of God-knows-what kind of chemicals they put in those things, be my guest. Just don't expect me to be at your funeral."

"You aren't invited to my funeral anyway," the boy pointed out. "I don't even know your name." Ellie let out a slightly aggravated sigh. She knew she was going to regret this.

"Ellie," she said. "My name is Ellie."

The boy then plopped down right next to her on the curb and Ellie felt the immediate urge to scoot away a bit. She didn't, though. She was scared if she did, then he'd think she was afraid of him. So, she stood (or rather, sat) her ground.

"Well, isn't that a pretty name." He then extended his hand out to her. "Nice to meet you, Ellie. My name is Anthony."

"Nice to meet you, too." Ellie was hesitant to take his hand but did it anyway. "Uh, your name is nice as well." Anthony's smile immediately fell.

"No, it's not," he spat. "It's retarded."

"How so?"

"My stupid fucking parents gave it to me," he said. "They couldn't pick something respectable. They had to go with goddam Anthony. It's just more evidence to show they hate me."

"Oh… I'm sorry to hear that." Ellie didn't know how else to respond. "If it's any consolation, I kind of get it."

"Why? Your parents treat you like shit, too?"

"No. At least, not the ones that I have now."

"You one of the adopted kids?"

"Yeah."

"So am I," Anthony admitted. "My parents forced me to come to this thing. They think it'd be better if I had at least a few friends who know what I've been through, but what they don't get is that no one's been through what I've been through."

"What have you been through?"

"They just don't get it," Anthony said. "It's always 'Jake this' or 'Jake that.' It's like they don't even care that I exist. They don't love me. They only love their real son."

"That's unfortunate." Ellie glanced at her watch again. Another twenty-five minutes to go.

"You don't get it either." Anthony shook his head.

"No, not really," Ellie admitted.

"At least your honest about it." Anthony began fiddling with the unlit cigarette in his hand. "Nobody cares about me. I don't even think my parents would care if I died."

"I care." Anthony looked up at her in shock.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do."

"You've only been talking to me for two minutes. How can you care?" True, Ellie hadn't met him before this moment, and true she was completely creeped out by him and had been practically terrified this entire conversation. In truth, she really didn't care, but something deep inside of her told her that he needed to hear someone say those words to him at least once in his life, even if she really didn't care.

"Fuck you." Ellie shrugged. It was better than the response she was expecting.

"Right back at ya." She held up her extended middle finger just to further punctuate her point.

"Is that an invitation?" The cold fear began to build up in her stomach again.

"No." Ellie couldn't be hastier in her response. "Shut up!" Anthony laughed.

"Alright, but is it too much to ask for your number?" Ellie hesitated, at first, but decided that there'd be no harm in it.

 _After all, it's not like he's going to call me, right?_ She thought.

"Do you have a scrap of paper?" He smiled and pulled an old, crumpled receipt out of the pocket of his hoodie.

* * *

 **Saturday, March 13th, 1999**

Ellie hopped out of the truck, seeing red. She needed to get away from Anthony, as soon as possible. Unfortunately, she chose to wear heels, so running wasn't much of an option, meaning she had to deal with him screaming at the top of his lungs as he grabbed at her and tried to drag her back to the truck. Unfortunately for him, though she could scream, too.

Ellie had no idea when she and Anthony started dating. She just knew one minute, she was hanging out with him in the park like normal, the next he was defiling her in the bushes behind the baseball field. From that point on, it was Anthony and only Anthony in her life. Sure, she had her family, but Anthony made sure she knew that he was the priority in her life; he came first.

Of course, Ellie disagreed with that and it had been a point of contention in their relationship for the longest time. Anytime Ellie made plans or failed to be at his beck and call, he verbally berated her. He even came close to hitting her a couple of times, not that Ellie disclosed that to anyone, but still he **hadn't**. The minute he did hit her, that would be it. She was all the things he said she was – trash, a whore, a cunt, etc. – she knew it deep in her heart. She also knew that it was **never ever** okay for a guy to hit a girl and get away with it. The second he did, that would be it. Everything would be over between them. That's what she swore to herself.

However, by the second it looked more and more like it wasn't going to come to that. She wasn't going to get back into that truck, no matter how much Anthony begged, pleaded, or cried. She just needed to get away from him.

What had started the fight was just the simple beating of a dead horse. Ellie had taken a trip to Spain with her senior class the year before and Anthony had been accusing her of cheating on him ever since. She hadn't. She just got a nice blistering red sunburn (Oh, the perks of being Irish!), a few beautiful photos of the Catalonian shoreline, and nice and soaked from the rains that fall mainly on the plains. She didn't meet anyone while she was over there, and she barely socialized with her classmates. However, nothing she said could convince Anthony otherwise. She cheated on him and he wouldn't let it go until she admitted it. So, instead of trying to defend herself for the millionth time, Ellie got out of the truck and began storming through the streets of Boston.

Ellie wasn't quite sure where she was going. Boston had been the next town over for most of her life, but she had rarely ever been there. Anthony was supposed to be taking her to a fancy restaurant down by the Waterfront, but the hell if she knew where that was. If worse came to worse, though, Ellie was certain she could get back to Quincy if she needed to. All she needed to do was take the Redline to Wollaston Station and it'd practically be a straight shot back to the college. So, reassured that she wasn't completely lost so long as there was a T Station nearby, Ellie did her best to powerwalk through the late-night crowd and avoid the persistent, grabbing hands of her boyfriend.

Eventually, though, the crowds started getting thinner and thinner and Anthony was still nipping at her heels like a shiatsu. Desperate, Ellie eventually walked through the first pair of doors she saw, hoping that the threat of causing a scene would be enough to send Anthony running with his tail between his legs. Instead, all that ended up happening was that she hit a dead end and Anthony was finally able to reach out and grab her arm.

"What are you doing? Let go of my arm!"

"No! You're coming back to the truck right now." Ellie refused to budge, causing Anthony to lose his grip as he pulled her arm.

"No," she said firmly.

"Go back to the truck right now." The menacing tone of Anthony's voice would've sent most people running. Ellie stood her ground.

"No," she once again affirmed. "Not if you keep throwing baseless accusations in my face!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, I **know** it happened!" Anthony's voice resonated throughout the restaurant they had stumbled into. "I **know** you cheated on me! The least you can do is admit to it like the little slut you are!"

"For the last time, I didn't cheat on you!" Ellie's voice was already beginning to feel raw from all the screaming she had been doing.

"No, don't you lie to me right now!"

"I'm not lying! It's the truth!"

"The truth? Really?" Anthony got so close to Ellie's face that she could feel his spit splattering against her face as he spoke. "If that's the truth, why didn't you pick up half the time when I called you?"

"I was on vacation! What do you honestly expect me to waste a trip to Spain by sitting in my hotel room all day just to answer my asshole boyfriend who calls every hour on the hour?"

"If you weren't with someone else, you would've picked up the phone!"

"Bullshit!"

"Did you suck his cock?" Anthony sneered. "Did you fuck him really good and hard? I bet you did, you little slut! I should've known something was off when you started to take those Spanish classes! You just wanted to be able to flirt with a bunch of Spics in front of me without even knowing! I heard what you said to the guy at MacDonald's the other day! 'Puedo conseguir diez dólares de vuelta?' I know what you said you, filthy whore!"

"Really? You're an expert in the Spanish language now?" Ellie couldn't help but deadpan. "Tell me, what am I saying right now? Lunes, el Martes, miércoles, Jueves, Viernes…"

Ellie suddenly felt a sharp pain in her jaw and stumbled backward from the force of it. Cradling the injured piece of her anatomy, she looked up at Anthony, eyes wide with shock. The horribly dark expression on his face was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

"Don't you insult me!" That's all he had time to say before a fist went flying into his face. Once that happened, the entire scene broke out into chaos practically instantaneously. Almost every man in the place joined in the sudden fray, with the sole goal and intention being to beat Anthony to a pulp.

 _Good. Let them._

Ellie used this as an opportunity to slip out of the restaurant unnoticed. She only made it as far as the traffic light at the end of the block before her emotions caught up with her and she had no choice but to break down and cry.

 _That's it. No more. I can't do this anymore. If he's going to use me as a punching bag, then I don't deserve to be with him at all._ Ellie kept repeating that in her mind and it only served to strengthen her resolve. She had to do this. She had to break up with him. She had to.

After a few minutes of sitting out on the sidewalk alone, Ellie heard footsteps approaching her and her entire body quickly tensed. She knew who it was going to be, and she forced herself to remain committed to her resolve.

"Hey, are you okay?" That certainly wasn't the voice she had been expecting. Ellie didn't let her guard down, though. She refused to turn to look at the person, instead staring down the crosswalk signal across the street.

"I'm fine."

"You sure about that? That was a pretty bad hit you took." Studying the voice, a little more closely, she realized that it belonged to a man and that clearly wasn't from around here. She wasn't sure if he was British or Scottish, or whatever, but whatever it was, it wasn't American.

"'Tis but a scratch," Ellie dismissed. "I'm fine."

"Do you have anywhere to go?" Ellie was starting to find this man's persistence and the worried tone of his voice disconcerting. "We threw that guy out of the bar. If he comes back my brother and I will give him hell."

"Thank you for the offer, but with all due respect I just want to be alone right now, so why don't you just fuck off?" That may have been a little too harsh, but if Ellie knew anything, she knew that the best way to get someone to leave you alone was insulting them. It was also the best way of inciting a physical altercation, but that's not what ended up happening. Instead, the man uttered something along the lines of "fine, be like that" and walked off, leaving Ellie alone with her tears.

In hindsight, Ellie should have left a lot sooner than she did. Otherwise, Anthony wouldn't have found her and hoisted her to her feet by the collar of her shirt.

"What in the actual fuck did you do to me?"

"Anthony, what the fuck?" Ellie tried to twist out of his grip but easily failed. The only way she could possibly get out of this would be by unbuttoning her shirt and she had a feeling that would only make things worse given that she only had a bra on underneath the shirt – a racy one at that.

"You did this to me!" Anthony pointed to a bruise forming on his left eye. "This is your fault!"

"This is my fault? **You're** the one who hit **me**."

"Screw you! You would've let them kill me! You don't care about me at all!" Tears began to fill Anthony's eyes.

"You're being overly dramatic! Let me go and get out of my life!" Just like that, Anthony dropped her back onto her feet.

"Alright, if that's how you want it, consider me gone."

Ellie didn't have time to process what happened next at all. One second, she was giving him a perplexed look as she tried to figure out what he meant; the next, she was barely holding him back from jumping in front of a moving car by his wrist, begging him not to do it. She screamed, she cried, she yelled, but Anthony continued to attempt to break free from her grip, calling her every vicious name in the book as he kept trying to pull himself in front of every car that went by. Eventually, Ellie saw no other way to end this but to just give up.

"I do care about you, Anthony! I couldn't live without you! I love you! Please, don't do this! I forgive you! Let's put this behind us! Just knock this shit off right now!" At that point, Anthony essentially froze in place.

"Do you really mean that?"

"With all of my heart." The words felt like poison on her tongue. Things were quiet for a while before Anthony finally spoke up.

"Let's get back to the truck."

"Alright."

Ellie trailed closely and quietly behind him as he led the way back to the truck. As she walked, she came to the realization that she probably could never leave him. He was either going to keep her as his own personal punching bag for the rest of eternity, or something much worse. Either way, Ellie knew that this day, this moment, marked the end of her life.

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 **If you liked this, be sure to leave a review. Also if you hated this, be sure to leave a review. If you want me to kill myself, I'll assure you that I understand the sentiment but my therapist says killing yourself isn't the way to solve your problems and I don't want to piss her off, so... Yeah, don't bother reviewing if you're gonna say that.**

 **I have an extended Author's Note going up on my blog (I have the address typed out on my profile, so go there to find it 'cause I know FFN is going to eat it), so be sure to check that out. Follow me on Twitter and Tumblr for updates, and if you prefer, this fic is also being uploaded to AO3, so be sure to follow me on those sites as well. I have the same username on all of them.**

 **Remember kids, domestic violence is a serious issue. If you or someone you love is currently in an abusive relationship, feel free to call 1-800-779-SAFE (7233) if you are in the US. If you are outside of the US, search for domestic violence help of domestic violence hotline in the search engine of your choosing. Thank you.**

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 **This chapter was originally posted to FFN on 4/7/18**


	2. Worlds Away

**I have to be honest, I'm not entirely sure about this chapter...**

* * *

 **Wednesday, March 22nd, 2000**

"I have to admit, Anthony," Ellie remarked as she took another sip of champagne. "I was a bit nervous when you said you wanted to take me out for my birthday, but this has been pretty amazing."

"What did you have to be nervous about?" Ellie put her glass down and cracked a smile.

"Ah, you know," she giggled. "Sometimes you can be a bit… Temperamental."

"Well, I wouldn't have to be so temperamental if you just did what you were supposed to." Because there was no threatening undertone to Anthony's voice, Ellie completely missed the slight against her. Instead, she just giggled some more.

"My bad. Hey, can you get the waiter or whoever to come back? This champagne is **so good**."

"That's your third glass."

"I know, but it's **so good**!" Ellie punctuated this by drinking the last bit of gold liquid out of her glass. "Thanks for convincing the waiters not to card me."

"It's no big deal. What difference does a year make?"

"None. I wish the people who made rules about these kinds of things realized that."

"Well, either way, I think it's time to stop for the night."

"Why? I'm not that drunk," she said through a fit of giggles.

"Still, it's bad enough that my girlfriend's a whore, don't need people knowing she's a drunk, too." Ellie's buzz died instantly.

"Oh, can we please not have this fight right now?" She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hand to her forehead. "We're having a good time. Let's keep having a good time."

"Only if stop drinking for the rest of the night." Not wanting to have a confrontation with Anthony in such a nice restaurant, Ellie reluctantly agreed to his terms. When the waiter came back, Ellie asked for a glass of water while Anthony asked for the check.

"So," Ellie said after a long beat of silence. "Is this all you have planned for tonight, or is there another surprise waiting for me around the corner?"

"Don't worry," Anthony smirked. "I still have a few tricks up my sleeves."

"Oh, really?" Ellie mirrored his smirk. "Do I get any hints as to what they possibly could be?" Anthony chuckled.

"Let's just say you're about to get a birthday present you're never going to forget."

* * *

 **Sunday, June 3rd, 2001**

Being back in such a familiar space was nothing but comforting. Most of the time nowadays, Murphy MacManus' mind was plagued with images of bloodshed and death – particularly the deaths of those closest to him. It seemed that most of the time, his mind was determined to give him a slow shot-by-shot replay of Rocco's death, or created some sort of imagined scenario in which he and Connor were doing a job that went wrong and resulted in Connor's death.

Those dreams always shook him to the core, but he knew there was no way to stop them. Rocco was dead and gone. Murphy had tipped over the chair he was restrained to shuffled as close as he could to the man as he took his last, dying breaths. He had seen it happen with his own eyes and there was no erasing it or bringing Rocco back. When he awoke from those dreams, the reality always crashed down on him hard and left a renewed sense of grieving in its wake. Murphy usually cried himself to sleep on those nights.

The dreams where Connor died were always devastating. Sometimes, they would be trapped in Yakavetta's basement again and instead of shooting Rocco, Papa Joe turned his gun on Connor. Other times, the situation would be completely fabricated. They would be in the middle of taking out some child murderer or something and out of nowhere Connor would be shot. Just like that, in an instant, Murphy's brother would be torn away from him. He always awoke with a start after those dreams. Murphy wouldn't be able to relax until he saw Connor's sleeping form on the other side of the room, and he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep afterward.

Tonight, though, for once he had a good dream. Not just a good dream, an amazing one that left him feeling warm all over. It was a dream about **her**. Murphy had no idea who she was, but she was beautiful, like a beam of light. Her smile was always kind and there was always a gentle air about her. He had been having dreams about this girl for as long as he could remember. Other than her smile, though, there weren't many details about her that he really could remember. She was just a nice, peaceful presence in his mind, which was something he was coming to value more and more.

They were in a desert, but it wasn't unbearably hot. Occasionally, the breeze would kick up the sand a bit, but otherwise, things were peaceful. He didn't realize she was there at first. She was standing far off in the horizon and looked like nothing more than a spec in the distance. It was her, though. Murphy just knew it.

Murphy tried to take a step closer to her, but when he did so, his foot sunk into the sand. He tried to move the other foot and achieved the same result. The more he struggled to pull his feet free, the deeper they sunk into the sand. Realizing that he wasn't going to get anywhere, Murphy stopped struggling and attempted to re-assess the situation. However, he then heard a voice calling for him in the distance.

"…Find me," she said.

"What?" Murphy tried to move closer to her, but only managed to sink ankle-deep into the sand.

"…Find me. You have to…"

"Have to what?" He questioned as he struggled through the sand. "Find you? I'm trying to do that!"

"…To come…" The voice was only moving further away, increasing Murphy's desperation and causing him to fall forward into the sand. As he struggled to get up he found himself being consumed by the sand. He tried to claw his way out, but it was no use. The sand was too strong and dragging him under.

"Come?" he shouted to the woman, whose silhouette was now a mere speck in the distance. "Come where? How am I supposed to get there? I can't get free! How am I supposed to find you if I drown in the sand?"

"…Come and find me." Was all she said in response. After that, Murphy was pulled completely under the sand and everything went black.

* * *

Murphy awoke with a start and immediately turned his attention over to Connor. His brother was clearly comfortably asleep in the bed next to his, giving Murphy some sense of relief and reassurance. Glancing out the window, he could see that it was still some ungodly hour of the night. He tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but unfortunately, his mind was abuzz with the events of the bizarre dream he had just had, and he found relaxing and falling asleep next to impossible.

The first thing that struck him as bizarre was that even though he was drowning in sand, he still felt perfectly at ease in the dream, right up until the sand caved in around him. However, he was able to write that off rather quickly. Any dream about her always was soothing, even if what was happening around them was frightening or just plain bizarre. Despite that, usually, she was right there standing next to him when all the said frightening/bizarre things started happening. This time, she was only a shadow in the distance and all he wanted to do was get closer to her, and it seemed that's what she wanted as well, which lead him to his second point.

She seemed adamant that he needed to come and find her. Why? He wasn't sure. He had tried to get closer to her, but nothing he did seemed to work. The sand just kept him anchored down to that one spot. The more he fought against it, the deeper he sank. Normally, he'd find that kind of thing terrifying, but this time he didn't.

Which brought him to the final oddity about the dream; he didn't find it frightening or disturbing at all. One would think that was just a testament to the cruel, disturbing nature his dreams had taken due to all the horrible things he had done and witnessed over the past few years, but Murphy was certain that another element was at play; because it was a dream about her, he wasn't afraid at all.

It was something that he had noticed all the way back when he started having these dreams as a kid. Nothing that happened in the dreams could or would frighten him if she was there. He didn't understand why, but dreams with her in them – no matter how disturbing they were – would leave him to feel nothing but calm and reassured. He never clearly saw her face and he didn't know her name, but all he could feel was a sense of peaceful ease whenever he dreamt of her.

So, after briefly considering those points, he let that calming sense completely wash over him as he fell back to sleep. That ended up being the first time in months that he was able to get a full night's sleep.

* * *

 **Saturday, June 9th, 2001**

Every night that following week, Murphy had that same dream repeatedly. It wasn't like he minded. He was getting a decent amount of sleep with this recurring dream. Plus, he got to see her, so really nothing could be a detriment to this situation. The sinking in the sand part didn't even bother him that much. Most of the time his dream-self didn't fight against the force pulling him down into the earth. He just let the ground overtake him as he called out to the woman who was beckoning him.

That was the only thing bothering him about the dreams at this point. Every single time he had them, he screamed at the silhouette standing off in the distance, begging her to tell him where she was; what he had to do to free himself from the sand to get to her, or better yet, for her to come to him so they wouldn't have to scream across a desert at each other. There was only one response he got, and that frustrated him to no end.

 _"You have to come and find me."_

There was obviously something more to this dream, but whatever it was Murphy just couldn't seem to figure it out. Why did he need to find her? Why was the sand making it impossible to move? What did it all mean? The more he thought about it, the more frustrated Murphy got. His dreams were never this complex or had seemingly hidden meanings in them. After he became a Saint, all his dreams were twistedly violent, but before they were mostly all just plain weird. The only one that he would say had some sort of message to it was the shared dream he and Connor had that led them to become the Saints, but that one had been blatantly clear.

 _"Destroy all that which is evil, so that which is good may flourish."_

Both he and Connor knew right there and then what that meant; God had given them a mission to cleanse the world of evil. It was the path they were meant to take, their destiny. This, however, was not so clear-cut.

Murphy considered the possibility that the dream was a message meant for both him and Connor but quickly dismissed it. For one thing, if it was meant for both, wouldn't they both have had the dream? Connor hadn't said anything about having a dream about a (gorgeous) woman calling to him from across the desert and being unable to reach her. That, for sure, Connor would have told him about. Any dream his brother had involving a beautiful woman was always relayed back to Murphy, mostly because dream conquests were all they had to brag about anymore. Their status as wanted criminals had really put a damper on their sex lives.

For another thing, it was the emphasis on the word you that made Murphy convinced that this message was meant for him alone. He specifically had to find this girl, wherever she was, but he couldn't. The sand held him in place and kept him from getting to her. What did it mean? What was keeping him from getting to her? Was this an actual person he was supposed to find or was it a metaphor?

Murphy glared at the ground as he kept running through all of this in his mind. He was certain he was never going to figure it out. The most he could do was sit there frustrated and twirl dead blades of grass between his fingers. At least the repetitive thoughts were keeping his thoughts off the cold and rain.

It was late, getting close to midnight. Murphy and Connor had decided to spend the night camping out in the fields, half because they wanted to keep an eye on the herd during the storm, half because they needed something to break up the day-to-day monotony of their lives in hiding. They were joined by their sheepdog, Hannibal, who was currently curled up next to Murphy's left side. To his right was Connor, who was just as silent as Murphy was as he stared into the fire. His silence wasn't that surprising to Murphy. Things had been silent between them a lot lately. What did surprise him was the moment that Connor finally decided to break that seemingly unending silence.

"Alright, what's got your panties in a twist?" Murphy looked at Connor with wide eyes, completely taken off-guard by the question.

"Nothing," Murphy said easily.

"Oh, bullshit," Connor said. "You only get that look on your face when you're pissed about something. Now spit it out before I make you."

"It really is nothing," Murphy assured his brother. "Just a little, frustrated thinking about something is all."

"What?"

"A dream I had." Murphy hoped that short explanation would suffice. Thankfully, Connor turned to stare back at the fire after he said that.

"Just try to put it out of your mind. That's how I've been dealing with it." Murphy knew exactly what he was talking about.

"It wasn't a nightmare, though I have those too," he admitted. "It was actually a pretty good dream. I just don't understand what it means."

"Regardless, it's still probably best not to think about it too much." It was clear that was all Connor was going to say on the matter, so Murphy dropped his blades of grass and joined his brother in staring emptily at the fire.

A silence once again formed between them but given the fact that he wasn't allowed to focus on the dream anymore, Murphy found the silence suffocating and ultimately had to say something – anything – before it drove him insane.

"Hey," he said. "Do you remember that time Rocco…"

"What do you reckon that is?" Murphy looked up to see Connor pointing at something in the distance. Following the direction of his brother's finger, he saw the flash of a red light moving up one of the many hills that surrounded their land. "Who the fuck is out on the moors by himself this fucking late?"

Something about the scene must have seemed sketchy to Hannibal, too, as Murphy felt the dog shift away from where he was pressed up against his side and watched as the animal took off in the direction of the moors. Murphy and Connor quickly got to their feet and followed the dog, calling for the canine to come back.

* * *

 **Friday, November 2nd, 2001**

 _"Find me."_

Murphy awoke with those two words reverberating through his mind. Find her. That's what he needed to do. He needed to find her. That much-made sense now, but the rest of it didn't. Who was she supposed to be? Where was he supposed to find her? Why did he need to find her? It was all so cryptic and any time he tried to garner more information from the dreams, he only ended up with more questions than answers. It frustrated him to no end, especially since it was beginning to feel like he was running out of time. Why he felt this way, he wasn't sure. Murphy just knew that if he didn't hurry up and figure out this dream something horrible was going to happen.

That wasn't the only thing that had Murphy concerned. The night he and Connor went camping out during the storm, the boys had followed the dog up a hill to find the animal digging up a freshly dug grave containing the body of a young boy. They told their uncle, Sibeal, everything they saw that night and had him call the police to recover the body. They also asked him to investigate who had owned a lantern with a red light in town.

Once Sibeal had found the information that they needed Connor, Murphy, and their father went to confront the lantern's owner. When they arrived, the wife lets them in and confessed to them that her husband was responsible for the murder of the young boy they found in the moors and for the murders of several other young boys who had gone missing in the area, including their son's.

When the husband came home, Connor and Murphy held the man at gunpoint, but before either of them could fire the killing shot, the wife stood up, took their father's gun from where he had left it on the table, and shot her husband at point blank range. Satisfied that another evil man had been sent off for judgment and a grieving mother had gotten her revenge, Connor, Murphy, and their father helped the woman bury her husband in an unmarked grave in the moors – much like how his victims were disposed of – along with the red lantern.

In the weeks following this event, both brothers felt something stirring deep within them. Neither said anything about it, but with just one look at the other, they knew.

Then, one September morning their uncle had called them to meet with him at his church. When they arrived, Sibeal explained to them what had happened. A man had come in as a late-night confessor at the church. There was something clearly off about the man. He complained about hearing a voice in his head compelling him to do horrible things and begged the priest to help him. When Sibeal asked what sin it was the man needed to confess, the man revealed that he had kidnapped a woman and brutally raped her. When the man fled the confessional booth, Sibeal followed him out and got a good look at his face.

This, combined with the fact that the man gave the woman's name made it easy to identify him and track him down. As they confronted the man in the street he honestly seemed relieved as the two brothers placed their guns to the back of his head, thanking them for doing him the kind duty of being his executioners and begging for God's forgiveness as the two rounds entered the back of his head.

After this, the stirring feeling only became stronger and day by day. It was if they were being told they were needed somewhere else. It was just a feeling, but it was powerful, and Murphy couldn't help but wonder if it was in any way connected to the dreams he had been having. Considering that the dreams only started shortly before he started having these feelings, it made sense.

Murphy rolled over onto his side and stared at the Celtic cross tattoo on his right arm. It was the third tattoo he had ever gotten, the second tattoo he and Connor had gotten together, and the first tattoo he had gotten after moving to Boston. For some reason, Murphy couldn't help but feel drawn to that piece of the inked sink. In fact, he felt drawn to it a lot lately, continually scratching at it, tracing it, or just feeling the sudden urge to look at it. Although he had no explanation for it, he kept tracing the image of the cross, over and over until he started to lose feeling in the tip of his pointer finger. At first, it didn't make sense, but then all at once, it clicked.

That was the first tattoo he had gotten in **Boston**. They needed to go back to Boston! That's what was tying everything together! That was the place where he and Connor first became the Saints! That's why they were having that stirring feeling! That's where the dreams wanted him to go! Too elated to consider anything else, Murphy jumped out of bed and began to shake Connor awake.

"Connor! Con! C'mon, get up!" Connor let out an annoyed groan.

"What do you want, Murph?" Connor pushed away from the hands that were shaking him. "What time is it?"

"No idea, but you need to get up!"

"Why do I- Ah!" Connor was momentarily blinded when Murphy flipped on the light on his bedside table. "What the fuck, Murph?"

"We need to go, right now!" Impatient, Murphy grabbed a hold of Connor's arm and began to try to drag him out of bed.

"Ah, Murphy, slow down," Connor exclaimed. "You're not making any sense!" He was then dragged to his feet by his impatient brother.

"No, Connor, you don't understand," Murphy said, but Connor cut him off.

"Well, then explain it to me because you aren't making any goddamn sense!" Murphy let go of Connor's arm, took a calming breath, then looked his brother in the eyes.

"I figured out what that dream meant." His voice held no hesitation, just determination. "We have to go back to Boston." Connor narrowed his eyes at his brother.

"What dream? What are you talking about?"

"That dream that was bothering me the night we found that kid's body," Murphy clarified. "I figured out what it was trying to tell me. We have to go back to Boston."

Murphy went on to explain the events of the dream; the woman calling his name, being unable to reach her, and eventually drowning in the sand. The entire time a skeptical look remained on Connor's face.

"You're certain that's what the dream was telling you?" Connor questioned.

"Absolutely positive," Murphy affirmed.

"You do realize we're wanted for over two dozen murders over there," Connor pointed out. "It's too risky to go back there. Besides, how can you be certain that the dream was telling you to go to Boston?"

"It's just a feeling I have." Connor still didn't look convinced. "I know you've been feeling it too, Connor; the feeling that we're needed somewhere else and I just know, deep down, that it's Boston we're supposed to go back to. You can't tell me you haven't felt it, too. I've seen it in your eyes, Con." Connor was silent for a moment.

"You're right," he admitted. "I have had that feeling that we're needed somewhere else, but that doesn't mean we should immediately go back running to a place where we're wanted criminals."

"I wasn't suggesting that," Murphy said.

"Bullshit, you were going to drag me by the wrist across the fucking ocean if you had to." Murphy couldn't deny that. "Do you really feel like this is where we need to be?"

"Yes."

"Then we'll figure something out," Connor assured. "Just not right now. It's way too early in the fucking morning for that."

"Alright," Murphy agreed.

"Now go back to sleep." Connor then crawled back into his bed. Murphy did the same, bidding his brother goodnight over his shoulder. The same words that he woke up to echoed in his head as he fell asleep.

 _"Find me."_

* * *

 **Yeah... That ending was a little rushed. Not my best work, but I know that the next chapter is better, so rest assured, this fic isn't gonna suck that much.**

 **I have posted the extended authors note on my blog. Go to .com to check it out. Also, follow me on Twitter, DeviantART, Tumblr, and AO3. I have the same username on all sites.**

 **Remember kids, always follow your dreams - even if they lead you to do something foolish with no purpose or direction (it was the best I could come up with, okay?)**

* * *

 **This chapter was originally posted to FFN on 4/13/18.**


	3. It Does Not Pay to Be Drunk and Horny

**Happy One Boston/TWD Finale/FTWD Premiere Day!**

* * *

 **Sunday, November 11th, 2001**

In a little more than the span of a week, the brothers once again found themselves in Boston. Before they fled the country following the little show they put on at the Yakavetta trial, they're good friend FBI Agent Paul Smecker had given them a secure number they could call should they need to return to the United States for any reason, and while Connor might have been unsure about the reason they were returning, Murphy was certain that Boston was where they needed to be. So, after telling their father and Uncle Sibeal of their intentions, the two brothers set off on a cargo ship bound for America using the false names and credentials Smecker had given them.

Smecker was there to meet them the minute they set foot on American soil to personally hand them the address of the apartment they'd be staying in and the keys to the car he acquired for them. He warned them that neither were much to speak of, but the brothers were more than grateful.

"Thank you again for this, Smecker," Connor said. "We know how much you're risking here and…"

"Stop it," Smecker said. "My mission is to help you boys complete your mission in any way I can. This is part of that."

"Still," Murphy said. "If anyone found out about this…"

"That's my problem to worry about," Smecker said. "You boys just focus your attention on eliminating the 'forces of evil.'"

"That's definitely an oversimplification of it." Connor ran his fingers through his hair as he half-smiled.

"Yes, but it's accurate." Smecker stopped in front of a simple, black SUV and turned back to face the brothers. "So, what's the plan here boys?"

Murphy looked over for Connor to explain, but his twin just shot him a look that said "your idea. You tell him." Murphy shot him a glare and tried to think of a proper explanation.

"Uh, we're not entirely sure." He failed. Smecker looked confused.

"What do you mean you're 'not entirely sure?'"

"Well," Murphy said. "It's just a gut feeling that we have; that we're needed here." Connor snorted at that.

"Aye," Connor said. "Only it's more of Murphy's feeling and he's feeling it a bit lower than his gut." Murphy shoved Connor as he laughed.

"Shut up," Murphy grumbled.

"Well," Smecker said. "If you need any help with this 'gut feeling' of yours, feel free to call me anytime." Smecker pulled the door to the SUV open. "Although I must warn you that if you need to see me in person, you might have to wait a bit. Airline security's been a bitch since what happened in September."

"Airline security?" Connor questioned. "I thought you worked out of the FBI field office in Chelsea?"

"Nope," Smecker said. "Things have changed. I've been reassigned."

"Reassigned?" Murphy questioned. "To where?"

"To the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia," Smecker said with a smirk. "Apparently I have skills that would be beneficial for the next generation of agents to learn."

"You sure they're not trying to get rid of you?" Connor joked.

"Nah," Smecker said as he pulled the door open the rest of the way and slid into the driver's seat. "It's actually a pretty good gig. I have a few students who show a lot of promise; potential, they just need a little guidance and tough love to unlock it." He slammed the door shut and subsequently turned the vehicle on and rolled down the window to finish his conversation with the boys. "Remember, if you need anything, you just call me, right? I might be a few hundred miles away, but I'll always be ready to help you in any way I can."

"Absolutely," Murphy said. "And thank you again."

"Nice seeing you again, Smecker," Connor said.

"Nice seeing you, too, boys." Smecker started pulling away from the curb. "Good luck!" He called out the window as he pulled away into the street.

* * *

 **Wednesday, March 22nd, 2000**

"So, what's the big surprise?" Ellie asked, a smile playing on her lips. They were walking up the steps to the very lavish home Anthony shared with his father, mother, and brother. Ellie hadn't met Anthony's family many times, but the few she did they seemed rather nice and cordial. Oftentimes, she felt bad that Anthony talked about them in the vile way that he did, but that was something he couldn't help, and she was going to have to learn to live with.

"You'll see in a second," Anthony said. "Just one thing, please don't mind the mess. The cleaning lady left early today and they're going to know it's me, so there's no point in trying to clean it up." Ellie's brow knitted in confusion.

"What?" she said. "Who's going to know it was you, your parents? I don't get this, why can't you clean up the mess?"

"Don't worry about it." Anthony fished around in his pocket for the key to the front door. "Just trust me."

"Okay." Ellie reluctantly nodded.

Anthony found the key and used it to unlock the heavy oak door. Ellie was surprised by the state of things in the foyer. Red paint stained every wall and surface. It was smeared across a small table that decorated the entryway and tiny little droplets even coated the surface of the white roses that had most likely been knocked out of the smashed vase on the ground. A few feet away, a blond young man was taking a nap in a large puddle of red paint. At least, that's what Ellie told herself.

 _He's just drunk._ She thought. _They were doing an art project and he got smashed and passed out in the red paint. That's the rational explanation for this. He's not hurt, just **sleeping**._

Ellie didn't realize she was shaking until Anthony took her hand and guided her over to where the blond man was sleeping soundly. So soundly, in fact, that it didn't even sound like he was breathing at all. Ellie kept lying to herself about the reality of the situation until Anthony crouched down next to the "unconscious" man and flipped him over to reveal a hole in his head the size of a quarter and several dozen stab wounds across his chest. The man's blue eyes gazed blankly at the ceiling.

"So, Ellie, I know you've met Jake before," Anthony said with a wicked sort of a smirk gracing his face. "Why don't you say hello?"

It was at this point that Ellie's false reality shattered around her.

* * *

 **Sunday, November 11th, 2001**

She felt someone shaking her shoulder. She didn't remember falling asleep. She didn't even remember where she was but she thanked God for whatever was bringing her back to awareness.

"Hey," she heard an unfamiliar voice say. "Hey, are you okay?"

She picked up her head and tried to take in her surroundings. The lights were somewhat dimmed, and everything was a bit blurry, but she could tell that someone was trying to talk to her. Other than that, though, she didn't know what was going on, but she didn't care. She was awake and that was all that mattered.

"Mm," she hummed, trying to figure out what words it was she wanted to say. "You're my savior."

"I'm what?" The voice said. She was able to discern that the person was sitting to the left of her.

"My savior," she repeated. "You saved me from a bad dream. You're my savior."

"Right," he said. It sounded like he was concerned more than he understood. "How much have you had to drink?"

"Drink," she questioned. "I've been drinking?"

"Definitely," he said.

She felt around and felt a glass next to where her head had been lying. Dipping her fingers into the shallow pool of liquid, she brought them to her nose and found that it strongly reeked of alcohol. She made a disgusted face and pushed the glass away from her. She didn't know what it was she ordered, but whatever it was it was potent.

"Listen," The guy said. "Are you here with anybody?"

It took her about a solid minute to remember whether she came with someone. Obviously, she didn't. Julie was really her only friend and if they went out drinking she'd want to go to a club and the music here wasn't loud enough to be a club.

"No," she said. "No, I came by myself."

"Okay," he said. "Do you have anyone you can call?"

"My friend Julie," she quickly supplied. "And I don't even have to look for a phone to call her or find some change or anything. I have a cell phone!" She grinned as she held up the phone to show the man as if owning the cheap, plastic device was anything to brag about.

"That's nice," the man said before he leaned over the bar. "Doc, can you please get her some water and pretzels or something? She's had a bit too much."

"S-s-sure thing, l-lad," she heard what had to be an older man stutter out, before exclaiming: "Fuck! Ass!" She jumped a little in her seat, but the man next to her seemed unaffected by this, as did the other patrons at the bar.

"Thanks," the guy next to her said before the older man walked off to get her something to help her sober up. "Sorry about that. He's a little…"

"Don't worry about it." She said at the same time she tried to open her phone's contacts. "I just wasn't expecting it is all." She had to squint hard to see the little green screen, but eventually, the writing came into focus and she was able to make out Julie's name. She hit the green call button and prayed to God that it wasn't some ungodly hour and that Julie would be able to pick up. Thankfully, she heard the little click that indicated the person on the other end picked up.

"Hello?" Julie said on the other end of the line. She sounded tired.

"Hey, Jules," she said. "You awake?"

"No," Julie said. "I'm sleepwalking right now. I don't even know that I'm on the phone. I think that I'm having a conversation with my dead grandmother. What do you think?"

"I think you're being incredibly snarky and sarcastic, which is very rude," she said. "You're rude Julie."

"You don't sound right," Julie observed. "Have you been drinking?"

"Like a fish," she said. "You see that! I can be rude, too!"

"Where are you?" On the other end of the line, she could hear her friend get up from the bed and begin to search her room for something; presumably, her keys. "Is anybody with you?"

It took her a second to figure out how to answer that question.

"If you're asking if I came with anyone," she said. "No, I didn't, but there's this nice guy here."

That made Julie pause in her movements.

"A nice guy," Julie questioned.

"Oh, no," she said. "Don't worry. He really is nice. He's getting me water and he told me I should call you. He isn't trying to rape me or anything. He's pretty, too. He's got pretty blue eyes." Somewhere deep down inside of her, her sober self-was watching this whole scene unfold and was most likely cringing at what an inane dunce her drunken self-was being. She made a mental note never to get this drunk again, but she knew that before too long she'd completely forget about it and she'd just get all-out wasted again and suffer the same consequences. Besides, this guy probably wasn't as "pretty" as the alcohol was making him out to be.

She turned her attention back to the man next to her. He looked to be signaling something to someone across the room, but what she couldn't figure out. She didn't worry about it though. If he was signaling someone across the room as part of a plan to rape/rob/kill her, he was being very blatant about it.

"Hello," Julie's voice said a little too loudly on the other end of the line. "Are you still there?"

"Uh, yeah," she said. "Sorry, I got distracted for a second there. What did you say?" She heard an exasperated sigh on the other end.

"I said to stay put," Julie said. "Don't go off with anyone, especially this 'pretty guy', alright? Just stay put 'till I get there."

"Alright," she said. "Hey, have I ever told you what an awesome friend you are?"

"Yes." She heard what sounded like a car door slamming on the other end. Julie must have found her keys. "You've said it almost every single time I've had to drive you home drunk."

"Oh," she said. "Well, you're still an awesome friend."

"Where are you, anyway?" Julie asked. "It just occurred to me I didn't ask before."

"Oh, um…" She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember where in the hell she was. Did she leave the town or even the state? She just couldn't remember. "Uh, that's a good question."

"Let me guess," Julie said. "You're so drunk that you can't remember anything anymore."

"That's not true," she said. "I remember a lot of things. I remember your middle name's, Monroe. I remember Sky's birthday is on the twenty-fourth." She remembered that day clear as a bell. She shook her head in an attempt to get that thought out of her mind. It didn't work. "Hey, I know, I'll ask the pretty guy if he knows where we are."

She then tapped the man sitting next to her on the arm to get his attention. When she did, she could clearly feel there was some kind of scarring from some long since healed wound there under his shirt. He winced a bit when her fingers made contact with his arm, but she was too drunk to think to apologize.

"Hey," she said. "Where are we, by the way? I have no idea."

"McGinty's Pub in South Boston," he said. "Does your friend need directions?"

"Nah," she said. "I'm sure she can figure it out." She then turned her attention back to the call in progress. "It's McGinty's Pub in South Boston."

"Southie," Julie said in disbelief. "You went all the way out to Southie to get wasted. Are you out of your mind?"

"What's the big deal?" She questioned. "I wanted to get drunk. I found a place to get drunk. Mission accomplished."

"Well," Julie said. "For one thing it's more than twenty minutes away. You could've found someplace closer to campus to get knocked off your ass at. For another thing, it's Southie. What if you got raped, or mugged, or killed?"

"Hey," she said. "I have faith in Boston's finest to keep me safe, and when they inevitably fail, I'm sure the guys in ski masks will gladly take care of my rapist/mugger/killer."

She heard the guy sitting next to her resist the urge to laugh, and that brought a little bit of a smile on her face. She wasn't sure if he was laughing because he thought it was funny or laughing because he thought she sounded stupid, but she didn't care. He had a nice laugh.

"Yeah, well, they're gonna have to get in line behind me, Mom, and Tyler," Julie said.

"Oh, don't I know it," she said. "Do you think you can find the place alright?"

"Yeah," Julie said. "No big deal. I'll just drive around in circles until I find where all the drunken Irishmen are coming from."

"Hey," she said. "That is a stereotype and I don't appreciate that kind of thinking coming from my best friend."

"This coming from the drunken Irish girl," Julie pointed out.

"Screw you," she said.

"Not on your damn life," Julie said. "No, but seriously, I think I know where the place you're talking about is, and if I'm wrong I can probably find it still pretty easy. Just sit tight until I get there and don't go off with any rapists/muggers/killers."

"Are you sure I can't go with them?" She said. "They promised me free candy."

"Oh dear Lord," Julie said. "Just stay put." The call ended with that statement in lieu of goodbye. It took the recording of a vaguely British-sounding woman's voice instructing her that if she would like to make a call she would have to hang up and try again to get her to realize that her friend had hung up. Hitting the little red end call button, she slid the phone back into her back pocket just as the bartender came back with her water and food.

"Thank you, sir," she said gratefully just before she pulled the glass towards her and took a nice, big sip. Normally, she'd be a little more wary of drinking tap water – especially in the city – but right now, she didn't care. The water was ice cold and it felt nice and refreshing after putting nothing but alcohol on it for God knows how long. She was almost certain she started drinking before she came here. It was the only explanation she could think of as to why she wasn't cut off a while ago. Either that or she was drugged and she just so happened to have the nicest rapist ever sitting next to her. In which case, she wished him the best of luck. He was going to need it.

"N-n-no problem d-dearie," the bartender stuttered out.

"Thanks, Doc," the man said. "Just put it on our tab."

The bartender nodded and walked away but not before letting out another exclamation of expletives; it didn't bother her, though. She just shrugged it off like everyone else seemed to be. Instead, she just took a handful of pretzels and tried to think sobering thoughts. It didn't work, but at least she tried.

She glanced over at the man sitting at the barstool next to her and she started to feel guilty. She didn't even know this man and here he was buying her drunken ass water and pretzels. He shouldn't be this nice to her. She had made the stupid mistake of getting drunk at a strange bar in an area she wasn't entirely familiar with far away from the safety of her school. She should be suffering the consequences of her actions. She didn't deserve this kind of kindness. Regardless, this man did pay for her food and drink and potentially save her from something serious, so the least she could do was talk to him, right?

"So, uh, thanks for paying for this," she said. "You really didn't have to do that."

"It's no problem, really," he said.

"Yeah, but you really didn't have to," she said. "I mean, really, you didn't. I shouldn't have even gotten drunk in the first place. I don't even know why I did it. Hell, I don't even remember waking up this morning, but still, that's beside the point. You shouldn't have to pay for me being an idiot and getting drunk off my ass."

"It's no problem," he said again. "I'd rather see you get yourself home safely than taken into a dark alley with someone who has less than good intentions. Just be more careful next time. Don't go drinking alone. A young girl like you, God only knows what could happen. You don't seem that drunk, though; just a little langered."

"Langered," she chuckled. "That's a funny word. Come to think of it, you talk funny. Where are you from?"

"Ireland." She immediately felt stupid for asking.

"Right," she said. "Irish bar, should've figured." She tried to laugh it off awkwardly but failed. "So how do you know I'm not off my ass drunk?"

"Because you can still carry on a conversation for the most part," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm not entirely sure about that. This one isn't going to good."

"Just keep eating your pretzels," he said. "It'll help."

"Yeah," she agreed. She took another handful of pretzels. It felt so good to put something on her stomach. That made her wonder if she had even eaten anything so far that day. Something in the back of her mind told her probably not. "Why'd you come to America?"

"What?" He looked confused. It took her a second to realize that she said that with a mouth full of pretzels. That was embarrassing. She swallowed and hoped that any redness in her cheeks would be shrugged off as an effect of the alcohol.

"Why'd you come to America?" She repeated. "I mean, it's not really any of my business, but, you know, small talk."

"Well, my brother and I just kind of wanted to come here, ever since we were little kids," he said. "Plus, we had other reasons for coming."

"So, you came to America with your brother," she said. "That's nice. Where is he now?"

"At that table over there, wondering why I'm taking so long getting the next round of drinks." He pointed over to a table where a man with auburn-brownish hair was sitting. The man was signaling for his brother to come over. She looked over to see the guy to her right's response. He just shook his head and mouthed the words. "I don't think she can stand." Ellie caught on that he was just saying she wasn't that drunk to make her feel better but decided to brush it off.

"It's okay," she said. "You can go back to your table. I don't mind."

"Nah," he said. "I wouldn't feel right leaving you here alone. Not with the way that guy over there was eying you before." He pointed over to a man who had an intense death-glare trained on the two of them.

"Wow," she said. "He looks angry. What'd you do, kick sand in his face and take his favorite toy?"

"No," he said. "I think he's pissed that I swooped in on his target." It took her a second to realize what he meant by that.

"Oh God," she said. "Now I'm really sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Just please stop apologizing, it's unnecessary and it's starting to get on my nerves."

"So-" She caught herself. "It's a force of habit. I can't help it."

"Why?" He said. "You haven't done anything wrong. You shouldn't have to keep apologizing for it."

"Other than get drunk in a strange place by myself," she said. "That was a very stupid thing to do. God, why did I do that?"

"You already apologized for that," he said. "Don't worry about it."

"Yeah, whatever," She said before taking a sip of her water. "I just… I really don't deserve your help – and don't even try to object to that, because you know I'm right. You don't know me. I could be a psychotic killer for all you know. So why help me?"

"Well," he said. "Like I said, you're a pretty young woman alone at a bar in a particularly vulnerable state. I'd feel terrible if something happened to you and I did nothing to stop it."

"So, what," she said. "Do you have some kind of savior complex?"

"No," he said. "Why would you say that?"

"You seem like the type," she said. "Swooping in to save a damsel in distress when she's at her most vulnerable… Either you're somehow tricking me into doing something I regret – which I somewhat doubt given that you had me call my friend – or you have this thing where you have to save everyone. Am I right or am I wrong?"

"That's not what a savior complex is," he said. "A savior complex is when someone has delusions of grandeur that leads them to believe that they are responsible for saving and assisting others as an egotistical pat on the back. I have none of that."

"You know, only someone who's been told before that they have a savior complex would say that," she pointed out.

"Yeah, probably," he agreed. "Maybe I do have a bit of a savior complex, but you have to admit it's better than the alternative."

"Oh, yeah, definitely," she said. "So what is it that you do? I mean, other than save brain-dead bar skanks from potential rapists."

"I, uh," he said. "I work."

"Where?" she asked.

"I'm kind of self-employed," he said.

"You don't have a job," she said.

"No," he said. "I do."

"People only say that they're 'kind of self-employed' when they're actually unemployed and are too ashamed to admit it," she said.

"Oh really," he said. "And you know this how?"

"It's just a commonly known fact," she said.

"So then," he said. "What do you do?"

"Well," she said. "Although I should be calling you out on the fact that you seem to be hell-bent on keeping the discussion from going back to yourself, I'll take the bait. I'm in my senior year of college and when I'm not in class, I'm working on the school newspaper. It doesn't pay shit and consumes most of my free time, but it's something to do I guess."

"So I take it, it's not really something you're passionate about," he said.

"Not really," she said. "At least, not anymore; I used to be, for the longest time, but then… Then something happened and, I don't know, all the passion I had just kind of drained out of me. I don't mean that as a metaphor or anything. Well, maybe I do. It's just… It's all complicated and I probably shouldn't be bothering a total stranger with it."

"No," he said. "I don't mind. I'm interested. Keep talking." She nodded, before completely draining her glass of water while she figured out exactly how she wanted to word this.

"Have you ever felt like, I don't know, you're not yourself, but you're not someone else either?" She asked. "Like, something happened and now every single last thing about you has changed? I mean, not like you're two people in one body… Argh, I can't figure out how to explain this. Ah, I guess it's like, you have to wear a mask every day of the person you used to be, but inside, you're a different person from that person even though you're the same person, technically, and that different person just isn't a person. I don't mean like they're some kind of sociopathic monster or anything, just… They're like an emotionless alien that doesn't know a thing about humans and has to pretend to be this one specific human that all the other humans think they are and on top of it all they just couldn't care less; they're just numb to it all. That probably didn't make a lot of sense. I can't really formulate it into words too well, and the alcohol's probably not helping."

"No," he said. "I'm following."

"But do you understand?" She asked.

"Actually, yeah," he said. "I think I do. I think everyone feels like that at some point."

"So, you don't understand," she said. "And before you object, just hear me out. I get that everyone says that at certain points they didn't feel like they belonged or whatever the fuck, but they never understand it. Whether they haven't been through it yet or they've been through it, no one really understands unless they're currently going through it. Like, obviously if you've never been through it, you can't understand, but if you've been through it and its miles behind you, you forget what it's like. It's inevitable; it always happens. When you're eighteen you forget what it was like to be in your mind at age fifteen. You forget what kind of thoughts you had and your whole thinking process. You can maybe remember that, yeah, you felt like that, but you can't remember how exactly you felt and what exactly you thought. You've changed too much, and your minds changed too much. You can remember it, but you can't really empathize with it, which is why no one can really understand it."

"How do you know that I'm not going through it?" He asked.

"Because if you fully understood, you wouldn't have had to ask me about it in the first place," she said.

"I didn't ask you about it," he pointed out. "I just asked you to continue."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have asked me to continue if you understood," she said. "You would've just gotten it."

"Sure I would've," he said. She had nothing to respond to that with, so she just had another handful of pretzels and a sip of water while she figured out something else to say.

"Anyways," she said. "Seeing as I just poured my heart out to you, barely knowing anything about you, tell me something about yourself."

"I already told you plenty about myself," he said.

"You've told me almost nothing," she said. "All I know is you're from Ireland, you have a brother, and you're 'self-employed'. God, I don't even know your name and I've been talking to you for, like, twenty minutes."

"You haven't told me your name either, and you just 'poured your heart out to me'," he pointed out.

"Alright, fair point," she said. "I'm Eleanor. What's your name?"

"Murphy," he said.

"Okay, that's cheating," she said.

"How is that cheating?" He asked. "I just told you my name."

"You told me your **last name** ," she said. "And on top of that, it's probably one of the most common ones in this city. What, are you afraid I'm going to look you up in the phonebook or something?"

"No, that seriously is my first name," he said. "And technically, you didn't tell me your last name, so if anyone's afraid of getting looked up in the phonebook, it's you."

"Alright," she said. "I'll tell you my last name if you tell me yours."

"Deal," he said.

"Braden," she said. "Eleanor Braden."

"Murphy MacManus," he said. She smiled and held her hand out to him.

"Nice to meet you, Murphy MacManus," she said as he took her hand and shook it.

"Nice to meet you, too, Eleanor," he said.

Just as he let go of her hand, the door opened. Ellie turned around and saw Julie walking in, clad in fuzzy purple pajamas and a black winter coat. Ellie felt a pang of guilt for forcing her friend to get out of bed in order to drive her drunken ass home. One thing was for certain, she was going to owe Julie big time for this later. She was also probably going to owe Murphy until the end of time, but she didn't care about that as much because it wasn't like she was ever going to see him again.

"Oh finally," Julie said when she spotted Ellie at the bar. "Sorry I took so long. I found the place just fine, I just couldn't find a place to park. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Ellie said. "He got me pretzels and water." She pointed over to Murphy as she said that before turning back to him. "Thank you, by the way."

"Oh, you did," Julie said. "Uh, thank you. Let me pay you back for that."

"That's okay," he said. "It was no problem."

"No, really you've done too much already, and I have plenty of cash," Julie said as she pulled her wallet out of her pocket and retrieved a twenty-dollar bill. "Take it."

"No," he said. "Keep your cash. I don't need it."

"No, really, please just take it," Julie said. "It's the least I can do to pay you back. God only knows what would've happened if you didn't help Ellie. Just see it as my way of saying thanks."

Realizing he wasn't going to win this argument, Murphy took the twenty and stuck it in his back pocket. Julie then placed a good chunk of money on the bar, presumably to pay for all of the drinks Ellie had. She put a fifty down and Ellie couldn't help but internally groan.

 _I'm going to have to buy Julie a house to pay her back for this, aren't I?_ Ellie thought. However, she took that as her cue that they should get going and hopped down from the barstool. That was a mistake. Even though her head felt clearer than it did before, she was still pretty uncoordinated and ended up crashing into Julie's shoulder.

"Aw, shit," she said. "Sorry."

"Nah, it's fine," Julie said. "Can you stand?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sorry, just moved a little too quickly." She turned around – slowly as not to throw herself off her feet again – to see Murphy standing there, reaching out to catch her just in case she stumbled again. "Thank you," she said to him. "You have no idea how grateful I am for this. If there's anything I can do to make this up to you…"

"Don't even bother," he said. "Just get home safe."

"Alright," she said. "Thank you again, Murphy."

She then turned and followed her friend out of the bar.

Unbeknownst to Murphy, he had just saved a girl who was actively trying to kill herself via alcohol poisoning.

* * *

 **For those of you who don't know, One Boston day is a community holiday in the city of Boston to commemorate the anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings. The purpose is to promote community service in honor of those who were killed. I believe this is the first year they're doing it, so I'm not sure if this is going to be an annual thing from now on or not. However, that's not why I uploaded today (I originally wasn't going to because I feared it would be distasteful.) I'm actually updating because it's TWD finale/FTWD premiere day! I'm so excited! I can't wait to finish the fight and see how Morgan's going to be integrated into the FTWD storyline/cast! :)**

 **Check out my extended author's note on my blog (address is available on my profile) and follow me on DeviantART, Twitter, Tumblr, and AO3 (the username is the same on all sites).**

 **Remember kids, the moral of the date rape story is it does not pay to be drunk and horny!**

* * *

 **This chapter was originally uploaded to FFN on 4/15/18.**


	4. I Can Feel the Pull Begin

**Here's the deal, I could not get my laptop to start this morning, so in order to upload this chapter I had to go on to my sister's computer (which used to be my computer) in order to find and upload an old draft of the chapter. I'm gonna try my best to modify it so it fits in with the rest of the current draft, but I'm just going to say now that if there's anything odd or out of place in this chapter, that's my fault. It's probably a reference to something in the old draft I missed that I didn't put into the new one. Sorry.**

 **EDIT 4/20/18: I was able to recover the final draft from my old hard drive. I have updated this chapter to reflect the final draft.**

* * *

 **Monday, November 12th, 2001**

Murphy didn't really remember much about the fight once it started. He remembered he came up behind the guy and took him by surprise after he tried to punch Connor (and missed), and he remembered getting a few good punches in before he got knocked into something very hard and woke up several minutes later with a massive headache. If Connor explained to him what the hell happened, he didn't remember it.

None of that mattered at that moment, though, because as he laid awake in bed, all he could think about was how he would eagerly trade ever being able to remember anything again for just five minutes without his head throbbing. It didn't matter what he did; if he pulled the blankets over his eyes or stayed perfectly still, it didn't matter; sharp, electrical currents moved throughout his skull, making him never want to move, breathe, or be near sunlight ever again. He had never experienced a headache like this. Even just thinking was painful.

Eventually, he just couldn't take it anymore. Even though it was incredibly painful, Murphy finally got the motivation up to get out of bed and look for whatever painkillers he could find; the more powerful, the better. Though he knew that technically the most powerful thing they had on had was prescription-grade ibuprofen and it was most likely expired by this point, however the placebo effect still might kick in and he'd take any relief he could get from this terrible pain.

It took him almost an hour to find anything and it was mostly since he kept forgetting what he was supposed to be doing, and when he did remember, he couldn't remember where their medicine and first-aid supplies. Ultimately, he came to the obvious answer – the bathroom – and retrieved the medicine he needed. He couldn't find the ibuprofen, but he did find a bottle of Advil under the sink and figured it was better than nothing, popping a couple of pills into his mouth with the intention to take more later if the headache didn't go away. It probably should have concerned him that he couldn't remember such simple things, but the pain in his skull was bad enough to the point where he just didn't care. He just wanted to crawl back into bed and block out the sun for the rest of the day.

Just as Murphy got up to go back to bed, he noticed that Connor had finally woken up. His brother was sitting up in his own bed and was rubbing sleep from his eyes. He seemed to have slept well.

"Morning," Connor said as Murphy passed by. "You're up early."

"Yeah," Murphy said. "I was just getting some Advil." He shook the bottle that he took with him. "I woke up with a headache."

"Oh, we still have…" At that point, Connor looked up and saw the catastrophe that was awaiting him. "What the hell, Murph?"

"What?" It came out weak and very confused as Murphy had already climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head with the full intention of going to sleep.

"This place is completely destroyed," Connor said. "What were you doing? Did it even occur to you to put the stuff back after you tossed it out?"

Resisting the urge to groan as he sat back up, Murphy looked around and saw what Connor was talking about. The place was a complete mess, more than it normally was. All their clothes were pulled from the draws and strewn about in front of the dresser. The single pot and pan that they owned had been tossed out of their proper cabinet, as well as all the food items in the other cabinets and the refrigerator. The only things that seemingly hadn't been disturbed were their black duffle bags, which were sitting just as they had left them in the corner of the room. Murphy sat there confused, wondering how the place was destroyed in the span of a few seconds.

"Dafaq happened?" Murphy said.

"What do you mean?" Connor said. "You completely destroyed this place! What the fuck? Did you forget where the hell the Advil was?"

 _Oh yeah,_ Murphy thought. _I was looking for that._ That opened the question in his mind of whether he had found what he had been looking for. Upon seeing the bottle on the floor next to the bed, he felt a little sense of relief but began to wonder about if he had even taken the pills. Given the way his head felt, he was leaning towards no and poured a couple of Advil into his hand before getting up to find something to swallow it down with.

"You okay?" Connor asked.

"Yeah," Murphy said. "I'm just looking for something to drink so I can take these." He gestured to the hand that was holding the pills.

"I thought you already took some," Connor pointed out.

"No," Murphy said. "I'm pretty sure I didn't."

"Really," Connor said. "You tore this place apart to find these pills and didn't even take them once you found them?"

Murphy furrowed his brow at that. The more he thought about it, the less sense that made. However, the more he thought about it, the more his head felt like it was being electrocuted. He took the pills anyway, washing them down with a Gatorade that was left on the table. He then bent down and helped his brother put their clothes away.

It took a while for them to sort out what was what, mostly because they owned a lot of clothes that looked practically identical to each other's, but they eventually got everything sorted out and moved on to putting the food back into the proper cabinets and the refrigerator. Murphy kept forgetting for a few seconds what they were doing, causing Connor to become concerned. So concerned, in fact, that he felt it necessary to bring him into the bathroom and flicked the lights on and off.

"Dafaq are you doing?" Murphy asked his brother.

"I'm checking you for a concussion," Connor explained.

"I don't have a concussion," Murphy said. He tried to block the light from his eyes. The rapid change was only making his headache worse. "And even if I did what the hell would turning the lights on and off do?"

"It has something to do with your pupils," Connor explained. "When you're concussed they don't react properly. Remember the time you got pushed in front of the swing set when we were kids?"

"No," Murphy said.

"Well, I do," Connor said. "And I remember the doctor doing this back then. Stop covering your eyes. It's not going to work if you cover your eyes." Murphy pulled his hand away from his eyes, but had a hard time not squinting as the lights flickered on and off.

"How did I get pushed in front of the swing set?" Murphy asked.

"That's what you're focusing on?" Connor asked.

"Well, I don't remember this at all," Murphy said.

"I don't know," Connor said. "I just remember hearing you scream and some other kid saying you got pushed in front of the swing set."

"That's helpful," Murphy said.

"Shut up," Connor said as he got up close to him. "Now stay still and let me look at your eyes."

Murphy rolled his eyes before forcing himself to stay still. He let his brother study his eyes for a good, awkward minute before he finally had enough.

"So," Murphy said. "Do I look concussed?"

"I can't tell," Connor said. Murphy hit his upper arm. "Ow!"

"What do you mean you can't tell?" Murphy said. "I thought you said you knew how to check for this."

"I don't think you are," Connor corrected. "Your pupils aren't dilated or anything, so I guess that's a good thing. It's probably just a migraine or something."

"Well, thank you Dr. Connor," Murphy said. "I never would have guessed that. I'm going back to bed."

"You sure you're okay though?" Connor asked. "You haven't been acting right."

"I'm fine," Murphy said. "Just need to try to sleep this off." Connor still looked concerned. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine. For Christ's sake, if I had an actual concussion, don't you think I would've slipped into a coma once I fell asleep? I'm fine. It'd take a lot more than some idiot kid hitting me on a swing to take me down." Connor narrowed his eyes when he said that.

"That was when we were kids," Connor said. "Do you remember how you hit your head this time?"

Murphy furrowed his brow as he tried to think back. He remembered his entire conversation with Eleanor. He remembered that guy glaring at him after he stepped in to help her. He remembered her friend coming to pick her up. He couldn't really remember what happened after that, though; something about some guy being pissed that Murphy had chased off the girl he was planning to screw that night?

To be honest, the more he tried to think about it, the more his head hurt so he just decided to take the easy route and have Connor tell him.

"No," he said, throwing his arm over his eyes in a desperate attempt to block out the light. "What happened?"

"That asshole back at the bar slammed your head into the wall so hard, it knocked you out cold for nearly ten fucking minutes," Connor said. "For a few seconds I even thought you were dead."

"No, you didn't," Murphy said.

"Alright, but it was still a pretty bad hit," Connor said. "You sure you're alright, though?"

"Aye," Murphy said. "Like I said, I just need some more sleep."

"Alright," Connor said. Murphy then pulled the covers over his head. "Listen, I'm going to turn the TV on. Will you be able to sleep?"

"Yeah," Murphy said. "That'd be fine."

Murphy listened as he heard his brother flip on the television. Thankfully, Connor kept it at a low enough volume, so he'd still be able to sleep. Although, Murphy still found it hard to fall back to sleep. It was mostly due to the fact that he'd already slept for so long and probably didn't need any more sleep, but shutting his eyes and blocking out the light did seem to have some effect on his headache, which was good.

He listened as he heard his brother light up a cigarette and unzips one of the duffle bags. He heard the metallic clicks and clangs that indicated he was taking apart one of the guns to clean it. The television was playing a series of commercials when Connor first put it on, but it quickly changed over to 7 News. The overly perky sounding anchor – Catherine Andria – rattled off the latest current events, most of which have to do with the tragedy that had taken place just two months prior, although she did touch on more local incidents, and that's where both his and Connor's interests piqued.

After going on about some incident that happened on 495 the previous night, the focus shifted to the story of a prominent mafia member who had been facing trial.

"In other news," The anchor said. "Carlo Gaspari was found not guilty on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder. Gaspari was accused of colluding in the murders of Giorgio Lazzari and his girlfriend Patricia Lapaz in March of last year. Lazzari and Lapaz were found in a reservoir off of Route 128 bound and beaten. It is believed that Lazzari and Lapas were tortured before their deaths. The prosecution argued that Gaspari had ordered Concetto Varno and Nicholas Masi to kill Lazzari due to an earlier dispute over a loan Lazzari failed to pay back. Varno and Masi were found guilty of committing the murders last August. Despite testimony from both Varno and Masi that they were hired by Gaspari to commit the murders, Gaspari was still found innocent."

Connor had paused in cleaning his gun and Murphy had sat up in bed, both of their eyes glued to the TV screen.

"You know what," Murphy said. "I think I'm suddenly feeling a whole lot better."

* * *

It took less time than they thought it would find where Gaspari would be. For whatever reason, the guy had his address listed in the phonebook. It was most likely an accident, but it ended up being the jackpot for the two brothers. The guy lived in a rather modest neighborhood in Quincy, not too far a walk from the nearest T station, so all they really had to do was hop on a train and tries not to look too suspicious as they circled the house.

The brothers had been following this case ever since they pulled those bodies out of the reservoir. Using some of their connections, they were able to find out that the couple had been tortured rather brutally before their deaths, and although Lazzari probably deserved it given some of the crimes he had under his belt, his girlfriend certainly hadn't. It was by complete accident she was there. The two guys who actually killed them got life in prison (which was the most you could hope for in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), but the guy who had ordered the executions got off Scott free. There was something inherently wrong with that, and Connor and Murphy had to ensure that this wrong was corrected.

After waiting four hours for something to happen, Gaspari finally emerged from his home. Connor and Murphy followed him to an "insurance company" about eight blocks down from where he lived. As he went inside, the two brothers positioned themselves at a bus stop diagonally across the street from the place. They didn't have the best view of what was going on inside, but at least it didn't look too suspicious.

They sat there for quite a while trying to figure out what was going on in that building. Connor tried to figure out what the conversation Gaspari was having with two other people in the building was about, but he was terrible at reading lips, so for all they knew they could be arguing over anything from a botched attempt to smuggle drugs into the country to who ate the last egg salad sandwich for all they knew. Murphy was slightly better at reading lips, but he couldn't see that well into the building due to the fact that the sun was casting a glare onto the windows. Not to mention that his head was hurting so bad that he could barely concentrate on what was going on right in front of him. He was starting to realize that it was definitely a bad idea for him to go out at that time, and it was certainly going to be a bad idea to try and take this guy out while he was like this. However, they didn't bring their guns or ski masks with them, so there was no way this was going to happen right away. This was just a reconnaissance mission. They were just trying to figure out how and when would be best to strike this guy, so that wasn't a concern yet, but it would be, soon.

Murphy was just about to suggest moving across the street in hopes of getting a better view when a commotion broke out across the street, not at the "insurance company" but at the pizza place on the other side of the street. They didn't see what happened, but as soon as it started, their attention was forcibly grabbed and torn away from the building. They couldn't fully understand what this girl was screaming because she was too far away, but as far as they could tell she had gotten thrown out of the restaurant and was protesting the action as loudly as she could. They were going to just brush it off as some crazy lady being disruptive to both the business and the public at large, resulting in her getting thrown out until they finally caught a piece of what she was saying.

"You can't keep me going inside," She had shouted. "You don't even work here! I'm also pretty sure it's against the law!"

That recaptured their attention and they watched for another solid minute as the girl tried to pry the door open. She eventually failed in her attempt, resulting in her turning in a huff and marching across the street towards them. By that point, Connor's attention had drifted back to the "insurance company" on the other side of the street, but Murphy watched her as she approached. Something about her seemed strangely familiar. He tried to wrack his brain to figure out who she might be or if he's even met her before, but he came back with nothing but pain. She was pretty though; long, curly brunette hair clipped back away from her face, dark eyes hiding behind dark frames, a long black coat and high heels that looked like they'd break your feet if you so much as stepped in them wrong, but she was stomping away in them like they were the most comfortable pair of shoes in the world. He'd imagine a girl like that would leave a bigger impression on his mind, but he was still drawing a blank.

The biggest thing he noticed about her though was that she was staring at both him and Connor intently as she approached. He wanted to think that his headache was causing him to imagine things, but unfortunately, it was proven that this wasn't the case as she came to a stop right in front of them.

"Hi," She said, causing Connor to look back at her and pulling Murphy from his thoughts. "Look, I don't know who you people are, but my name is Eleanor Braden and my sister in the pizza shop over there told me that you," she pointed specifically at Murphy when she said this. "You saved my ass from getting date raped at some bar the other night. I don't remember this at all. Hell, I don't even remember **getting** drunk and most likely you're just two strangers who don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about because it'd be one hell of a coincidence to run into the same guy twice like that, but that doesn't matter right now. What does matter is that my sister's not going to let me back into the restaurant to finish my meal in peace until I give you my number? So, can we all just pretend that this isn't the strangest situation we're probably going to get thrown into this week and let me give you this blank napkin so that way I can go back inside, say that it was the one she wrote my number on, and finish my lunch?"

The minute she said her name it all came rushing back to him. She was the girl that night at the bar. She looked drastically different without the cloud of inebriation surrounding her. The fact that she was now wearing glasses might have thrown him off a bit, too.

"Eleanor Braden," Murphy repeated.

"Yeah," she said. "What of it?"

"I think one hell of a coincidence just happened," Murphy said. "I'm Murphy MacManus. I'm the guy you met at the bar the other night." She narrowed her eyes at him.

"Right," she said. "I'm actually supposed to believe that. What, do you actually want my number or something?"

"I'm serious," Murphy said. "I met you the other night. You said that I had a savior complex because I was 'rescuing' you and I wasn't expecting anything out of it." That made her stops and thinks for a second.

"Yeah," she said after a few seconds. "That sounds an awful lot like something I'd say. I'm sorry. I don't normally drink that much and I really can't remember anything I said or did."

"No, it's alright," Murphy said. "You didn't say or do anything embarrassing."

"Good," she said. "I was actually kind of worried about that."

It was then that Murphy noticed that his twin was looking at both of them with an inquisitive look on his face.

"Oh," Murphy said. "Eleanor, this is my brother, Connor."

Connor then turned his attention towards her as he held out his hand to her. "Connor MacManus," he said. "It's nice to meet you, lass."

"Eleanor Braden," she said. "You can call me Ellie or Elle. Anything but Ella is fine." She then pulled her hand back and bit her lip as if she was unsure about something. "Listen, I have to get back and finish lunch with my sister before I have to get to my next class. I go to the college up the street, just so you know I'm not a minor. Anyways, I could give you my number, if you want it."

"Why would I want your number?" Murphy was more curious than confrontational when he asked that.

"Just, you know, as a thank you," she said. "Or if you want to talk or something. You don't have to use it."

He knew it was wrong. He knew he should say no and send this girl back on her merry way, but Murphy was intrigued. This girl – Ellie – he could tell she was smart and he could tell she wasn't the kind of girl who would normally end up when he'd met her. Maybe it was the headache blocking out all rational thought, but he couldn't help but want to learn more about her.

"Actually," he said. "I think I will take your number."

"Really," she said, sounding surprised. "Okay then." She then reached into her pocket, produced several napkins, found the one she wrote her number on quickly and handed it to him. "Just so you know I also don't normally hand my number out to strangers."

"I wouldn't think otherwise," he said.

"Okay," she said. "Well, it was nice meeting you both. I really must get going. I'll talk to you later, maybe?"

"Maybe," Murphy agreed.

"Alright," she said. "I'll take that. See you around." She then turned and headed back towards the pizza place. At the same time, Murphy stared down at the ten digits written in Sharpie on the crumpled, slightly stained napkin.

"You're not actually going to call her," Connor said, pulling Murphy from his thoughts.

"No," he assured his brother. "Of course not, I have more important things to do."

There was no truer statement on Earth. After all, they were the Saints of South Boston. Not only did their mission come first, but an innocent person who got caught up with them would only put themselves at risk. They knew that for a fact.

* * *

 **I'm also sick as hell, so I'm just gonna keep this short. Happy Patriots Day to everyone in Massachusetts and California! If you want to follow me on social media, take a look at my profile. Hope you all enjoyed this!**

 **Remember kids, there is no such thing as stranger danger. Just get in the car with the first creepy clown who promises you candy, video games, and a puppy.**

* * *

 **Originally uploaded to FFN on 4/16/18.**


	5. Caught in a Double-Cross

**This chapter is literally brought to you by the StarTech SATA/USB cable! It is seriously a lifesaver!**

* * *

 **November 12th, 2001**

After Ellie went back to the pizza place, Murphy and Connor saw Gaspari leave the "insurance company" with an "insurance salesman". They followed closely behind the two men to a Chinese food place (which for as nice as it looked, was probably a front for something, too given the limited menu options that weren't even legitimate Chinese food – just bowls of rice and tap water – and the fact that all of the employees were white) and listened in on their conversation as they sat down for their meal.

The two men mostly spoke in Italian the entire time, but that wasn't a problem given both brothers' expansive linguistic skills. Although Gaspari and his comrade also went the additional step of using code words to hide what they were saying, anyone with two brain cells would have caught on to what they were saying easily if it wasn't in a foreign language. There was to be an important "client" (likely another mob boss or drug kingpin) arriving in town the next night. Gaspari had scheduled an important "meeting" (likely to exchange a shipment of drugs) with him and he wanted to know if this "insurance salesman" (mob contractor) could spare some of his "associates" (hired scumbags) in case the deal went pear-shaped.

The rest of the lunch meeting consisted of Gaspari and the "insurance salesman" negotiating a price for his "services". When all was said and done, Gaspari left a generous amount of money on the table for the meal and left to go wherever it was he was going next. Connor and Murphy did not follow him. Instead, they followed the "insurance salesman" into the bathroom and "persuaded" him to reveal where this "meeting" was being held. They were able to garner a lot of the specifics from the "insurance salesman's" and Gaspari's conversation, but all they needed was a location. The "insurance salesman" eventually caved after holding out for quite a while (a certain wonderful game of chance that could only come from mother Russia tends to bring out the will to live in most people, especially when they're playing it **against** their will), revealing that the meeting was to be held at a small boatyard on the Boston side of the Neponset River. For this tidbit of information, the "insurance salesman's" life was spared. However, it's not like they had much of a choice either, given that if this guy died, then he wouldn't be able to contact the "associates" he had arranged for Gaspari, and the mob boss would know something was up when his hired help didn't show up as promised. Besides, even if they couldn't kill the guy right then and there, they both knew eventually that they would be sending him to his maker; not today, not tomorrow, but soon.

Right now, though, they had a bigger fish to fry. Connor and Murphy arrived at the boatyard, which was situated just barely three-quarters of a mile away from the mouth of the aforementioned river and had easy access to both Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it. Despite the fact that this part of the river was rather wide, all of the boats docked there weren't much bigger than a small yacht, so it was unlikely that this man that Gaspari was supposed to meet with would more than likely dock a vessel of similar size or smaller here as well. They were able to overhear that each man intended to bring five guys each, meaning that there would be at the very least, a total of twelve men on the docks that night. That was, if Gaspari was telling the truth and that neither side had any cards hidden up their sleeves. Knowing very well that this was a possibility, the brothers kept their eyes peeled and didn't let their guards down while they waited for Gaspari and his men to show up.

When they showed up around four o'clock, the sun had almost completely set. They had shown up about two hours early, but they were too worried about one of them trying to screw the other side over to really care about the wait. It was a nice day, with only a few scattered clouds floating by for most of it, however, it was much too cold to be going out boating, so there was hardly anyone out at the docks. That was good for them as not only would it be less likely for any civilians to get caught in the mix, but there were fewer people around to question why they were loitering on private property. The docks themselves were way too far open of a place to set up camp, so they hid and watched from behind a row of several boats that had been pulled from the water for the season. They were definitely encroaching on the property of the marine warehouse located directly next to the public boating docks, but once again, no one was around to question it.

By the time Gaspari and his men arrived at the boating docks, the sun had long since set and the city lights were twinkling in the distance. When he pulled up, though, the brothers' worries of underhanded tactics were confirmed not to be unfounded. Two other cars pulled up behind his black Mercedes, each carrying about five passengers. Add the two other men who got out of Gaspari's car with him that meant about thirteen on Gaspari's side – including the man in question – versus approximately six on the other guy's. That made for a scenario of nineteen hostile criminals against two MacManus brothers. The odds weren't playing in their favor; however, that was nothing new for them.

As soon as he got out of the car, Gaspari ordered his men to patrol the area and make sure there was no one there that shouldn't be. It seemed that he wasn't underestimating his opponent and assuming he was willing to play the same dirty tricks that he was. He put particular emphasis on checking all of the boats – both the ones ashore and the few still docked out in the marina. He must have been thinking that people playing for the other side might try to hide in the boats and attempt to ambush them. It was a smart move for the mobster; however, it became clear that Connor and Murphy had to think quickly before they were spotted.

Gaspari sent out four groups consisting of two men each; one group to patrol and inspect the area around the marine supply warehouse, one group to search around the building of the small boat rental company adjacent to it, one group to look around the Italian restaurant and it's parking lot, and one group to check inside the boats still in the water. The remaining men were meant to stay with Gaspari and keep their eyes open for any potential unexpected threats. As the men split up to perform their assigned tasks, Connor and Murphy moved from behind the boats to hide around the corner of a small garage attached to the side of the large building. This gave them a better chance of not immediately being spotted.

One of the men assigned to look around the building walked over to the side facing the docks while the other went in the direction of the garage that the two brothers were hiding behind. He detoured for a second to check inside of the boats that had been brought to shore, which gave Connor and Murphy an opportunity to get into position. Once the man found the boats to be empty, he continued on in his patrol around the warehouse.

As he turned the corner around the garage, he was immediately grabbed and forced to the ground. The man tried to scream out and plead for his life, but his screams were muffled by Connor's hand. He attempted to fight back, but it was futile. Both brothers had a nice firm grip on each one of his arms, and although he was kicking wildly, it was absolutely useless as both brothers were out of range of his legs. Ultimately, his throat was slashed by Murphy using his "Rambo knife", as Connor had dubbed it. The man continued to be held down by the two of them until he bled to death, which took a bit longer than one would expect.

Once the man was dead they dragged the body further behind the garage where it wouldn't easily be spotted. Although the massive amount of blood on the asphalt where he bled out would be a dead giveaway, they didn't have time to clean all of it up and just decided to leave it. After all, none of the blood was theirs, so they didn't have anything to worry about with it. With the body out of the way, the brothers placed a pair of two bright, new, shiny pennies over the corpse's eyes and said a quick prayer for the recently deceased before moving back into their previous positions behind the boats so they would be able to hear and see what was going on once Gaspari and his men reconvened; one down, approximately eighteen more to go.

Connor and Murphy watched as the men began to gather in the small empty lot directly before the docks. Gaspari stood in front of his men, but with his back to the brothers. He sounded intense as he spoke.

"Did anyone find anything?" He asked. All of the men who were sent out to patrol the area indicated that nothing was amiss. "Good. Now, I want each and every one of you to take up positions around the docks. Make sure that you stay hidden, but keep Mr. Sierra in your sights. If he makes one false move, you are to open fire upon him immediately, understand?" The men all stated they understood and Gaspari nodded in approval. Just as he was about to dismiss the men to perform their assigned tasks, the man to his left spoke up.

"Uh, sir," He said. "I only just happened to notice this, but we're a man short."

"What?" Gaspari said sharply as he turned to face the other man. Even from a distance, the fire was clear in his eyes.

"Oh yeah," One of the lower-level guys said, grabbing Gaspari's attention. "Scott didn't come back. I wonder where he went."

"Scott?" Clearly, Gaspari didn't know who they were talking about.

"He's one of the guys you contracted out for this," The man on the left explained.

"Where was he assigned to search?" The entire group was reluctant to supply an answer until one brave man stepped forth.

"He was assigned to look over by that warehouse over there with me," he explained. "He took one side, I took the other."

"You didn't look for him when he didn't return?" This one brave soul – who didn't look like the type to be easily intimidated – gulped nervously and had trouble maintaining eye contact with the mob boss.

"No," he said. "By the time I got back, everyone was gathering together. It's a big building. There's a lot of ground to cover. I figured he was just on his way back."

Gaspari was about to open his mouth to say something when the man to his right spoke up.

"Sir," The man said. "It looks like we have company." He pointed out to see where one could quickly spot the lights of an approaching vessel. Gaspari allowed an expletive in Italian to escape his lips.

"Do you think that's Sierra?" The man on the left asked.

"It has to be," Gaspari said. "He's early though. He must have something up his sleeve. Alright, you know what you're supposed to do, not do it!" All of the men split off to find a spot before their guests arrived. As the brave man was about to find his own position, Gaspari grabbed him by the arm and stopped him. "Except you," he growled. "I want you to find this 'Scott'. When you do, I want you to bring him to me so he can answer to me. If you don't you can only expect to suffer the same fate, understand?" The man indicated that he did before Gaspari let him go. The mob boss, two of his bodyguards and three more men who must have been assigned to join him on the docks then began to approach the partially submerged wooden platform. The man then walked back towards the marine warehouse.

Unfortunately for the brave man, he was unknowingly about to suffer the same fate as his friend, though it wasn't by the hands of Gaspari. Much like Scott, the man was grabbed by the two MacManus brothers before silently having his throat slit. The brothers once again placed pennies over a deceased man's eyes and said a quick prayer for him before returning to their spot by the boats. Only about seventeen more scumbags to go, they were making good progress.

Just as they made their way back to the boats, the man that Gaspari was referring to as Mr. Sierra was just stepping off his boat. Once he stepped into the light, it became clear that this man was Poncio Isaías Orellana Sierra, an infamous drug supplier who had a reputation for being just as ruthless as Gaspari. Some estimates said that he was involved with as many as two-hundred fifty murders up and down the East Coast, and reportedly four times that in his native Dominican Republic. However, a lot of this was speculation. Officially, it was believed he directly murdered two people Miami, one man in New York City; he ordered the deaths of four other people in four different cities; and he was believed to be involved in at least a dozen other investigations in the United States and at one point was considered to be one of the most wanted individuals by the FBI. Anything that he was involved in the Dominican Republic is unknown.

The dark-skinned man stepped out of the boat wearing a rather expensive suit despite the fact that he had been sailing and designer sunglasses despite the fact that it was nearly pitch-black outside. He was also wearing a million-dollar smile as he walked up the dock to meet Gaspari and his men in the middle. At this point, Connor and Murphy struggled to hear what they were saying. However, they were able to make out most of it.

"Señor Gaspari," Sierra said. "I didn't expect to see you here. I assume you were acquitted?"

"It's been awhile, Mr. Sierra," Gaspari said. "Yes, I was able to beat the charges. They had nothing against me in the first place. It was all circumstantial."

"Ah, yes, yes," Sierra said. "I know how it is. I've got a woman in Florida who says I broke her jaw. They don't have anything, though. Once this is over, that bitch is dead."

A few other unclear remarks were made before Gaspari finally said: "Alright, enough with the bullshit. Are we going to do this thing, or what?"

The two men then walked down closer to the boat. They were too far away to be heard, but the brothers could see two of Sierra's men bring several boxes up from below deck and open one of them to show off its contents to Gaspari. After several minutes of careful inspection and discussion, Gaspari nodded in approval and he and Sierra headed back down the docks to Gaspari's awaiting SUV, Sierra and Gaspari's men following closely behind them carrying boxes off of the boat. As they stepped closer their conversation became clearer and it became apparent that they were discussing Sierra's payment.

As the men stopped by the trunk of Gaspari's car, Murphy turned and looked at Connor. Murphy was thinking that they should go and take down Gaspari, Sierra, and their men now that they had their backs turned, but just one glance at his brother's face told him that Connor was a little unsure about what was going on and thought it would be better to wait it out. After thinking about it a second longer, Murphy figured that this was probably the smartest move and turned his attention back to the men who were now carefully studying a case of money in the back seat of the truck.

"I'm sure you'll find that everything is in order," they could hear Gaspari saying. Sierra could be seen holding a hundred dollar bill up to the light, checking for the watermarks that indicated that the bills were real US currency. Satisfied with what he found, he slipped the bill back into the stack he had pulled it from and began to count the stacks inside the case. This was when Sierra frowned.

"You're five-thousand dollars short." It suddenly became absolutely silent on the docks. Even the waves became silent in the wake of the mounting tension.

"No." Gaspari's authoritative voice broke the silence. "You asked for seventy-five thousand dollars. There's seventy-five thousand there."

"I believe you're recollection is incorrect," Sierra said, his voice giving away no emotion. "I said eighty thousand when we last spoke on the phone."

"You said seventy-five on the phone," Gaspari protested. "What are you trying to screw me over or something?"

"You're acting very childishly, Mr. Gaspari," Sierra said. "Just pay the remaining five thousand dollars and we can carry on as normal."

"I'm not paying anything!" Gaspari's voice continued to grow much louder and much more dangerous with every word. "You're trying to pull a fast one on me, but it's not going to work! You said seventy-five thousand on the phone and I'm not paying a penny more than that! If you have a problem with that, you can kiss my ass all the way back to Jamaica! Understand?"

"I understand perfectly, Mr. Gaspari." Within seconds of making that statement, Sierra pulled out a gun he had hidden underneath his coat and shot Gaspari in the head at point-blank range. Absolutely no one had seen it coming and the entire boatyard fell silent as the mafia boss fell to the ground dead; everyone that was, except for the MacManus brothers.

Utilizing the moment of shock to their advantage, Connor and Murphy finally decided that this would be the perfect time to strike. Almost as soon as Gaspari's body hit the ground, the brothers emerged from behind the boats and opened fire. One of the first shots struck one of Gaspari's bodyguards in the head, killing him instantly. The next shot struck one of the men with Sierra in the chest. It didn't kill him but it did severely wound him to the point where he wouldn't be alive for long.

It was at this point that the men started to come out of their shock and began opening fire, both at each other and at the two brothers. Sierra was one of the first to start shooting, given that he was the one who shot Gaspari and wasn't immediately thrown by the sudden turn of events like everyone else. He fired two shots at Connor but managed to miss both times. Murphy immediately turned his gun on the drug dealer and struck him twice; once in the wrist, causing Sierra to drop his gun, and once in the abdomen, causing him to fall to the ground. He didn't die immediately, though. Also, the placement of the wound meant it would take a while for the man to bleed out, but he was otherwise incapacitated for the moment. Add to it that one of the other men immediately scooped up his gun and began using it in addition to his own and it ruled out any possibility of Sierra rejoining the fight. Unless, of course, he had another weapon hidden on him somewhere, but as he shouted for his men to "kill the fucking bastards" and writhed in agony on the ground, that seemed less and less likely the case.

As the battle continued, Murphy noticed that he was beginning to feel light headed. It wasn't like he was going to pass out or anything, but it was concerning. Remembering Connor's concerns about him having a concussion, he began to wonder if it was a bad idea to do this even though he hadn't been at a hundred percent. However, he had to stay focused on what he was doing and what was going on around him. Murphy ignored the growing dizziness and continued to shoot bad guy after bad guy down. He just had to make it to the end unscathed, and then he could worry about whether he had a traumatic brain injury.

Minutes later, just as suddenly as the sound of gunfire broke out, it fell silent. Both brothers stood unharmed and with fifteen corpses spread out on the ground around them. It was a new record for the two of them, but they still had one last evil man to send away for divine judgment. They hauled Sierra two his knees and placed their guns on the back of the head of the man who was barely clinging to life. Before pulling their triggers, the brothers recited their family prayer, just as they had every single other time they executed someone in this manner.

"And shepherds we shall be

For Thee my Lord, for Thee

Power hath descended from Thy hand

That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command

So we shall flow a river forth to Thee

And teaming with souls shall it ever be

In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti"

Sierra was dead as soon as the two bullets ripped through his skull. He collapsed to the ground in a lifeless heap, just the same as Gaspari had following his sudden execution. Everything was quiet in the wake of their success; however, the brothers didn't get a moment to celebrate.

Murphy's head couldn't stop spinning. He tried to shake it off, but that only made the sensation worse. Murphy brought his hand to his head and began to focus solely on not passing out. Connor said something to him, but he didn't understand it at all and only nodded weakly in response. The last thing he remembered was his brother asking him if he was alright before everything went black.

* * *

 **I am just so happy right now I could cry! I went an entire week without being able to edit any of my files and it drove me crazy! I'm just thankful I was able to recover this stuff and thankful I didn't lose the final version of this, otherwise we'd be screwed 'cause the rough draft on my sister's computer doesn't have an ending. Also, I would have lost a good chunk of the other fic I'm working on, so... yeah... :/**

 **Remember kids, always back up your data. Otherwise, you might end up accidentally screwing yourself.**

* * *

 **This chapter was originally posted to FFN on 4/25/18.**


	6. A Drop of Water

**Happy _Infinity War_ release day! I am so excited for this movie, but unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to see it until next Friday, so... :/**

* * *

 **Tuesday, November 13th, 2001**

 _"Find me."_

This time, the sand didn't pull Murphy down. The ground beneath him was as smooth and as solid as glass. He ran across the desert floor with immense speed, rushing to get to the woman that was calling him.

 _"Find me."_

Murphy rushed to a stop as he finally reached the woman. He didn't feel the need to try and catch his breath. This was a dream after all. You can't get exhausted in a dream. The woman regarded him with an emotionless expression.

"I found you," he said.

"Yes, you did." Her tone was calm and peaceful, though her face betrayed no emotion.

"Why did I need to find you?" In response, the woman gestured for him to hold out his hand. He did so and watched as she poured a single drop of water into his hand. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Don't drop it." She then walked past him. Murphy turned to ask her more questions, but when he looked in the direction she had gone, she was gone.

* * *

Murphy awoke to the sound of shouting. He moved his head to see what was going on, but he was punished for his curiosity via a horrifyingly painful shock of electricity moving through his brain. He let out an audible groan, which roused his brother who had fallen asleep in the chair next to him.

"Hey," Connor said. "Easy. You don't wanna fuck your head up worse."

"What happened?" Murphy asked.

"You blacked out again." Murphy blanched at the words. "I took you to the hospital. We're waiting to be seen in the emergency room right now."

"The emergency rooms?" Murphy looked at his brother like he was out of his mind. "Have you lost it? What if the cops see the…" It was at that moment that Murphy noticed he was wearing a different shirt than the one he passed out in.

"Got you home first and changed your clothes," Connor explained. "I'm not an idiot. I knew if we showed up covered in blood and had no obvious wounds ourselves, questions would be asked."

"Well, I feel violated now." Connor smacked him lightly on the side of the arm with a magazine.

"We're brothers, you eejit," he said.

"Still don't like the idea of you undressing me in my sleep," Connor smacked him with the magazine again and Murphy let him. He wasn't up for a fight and Connor knew it, which is why he was going easy on him. "How long have we been here?"

"Six hours, you've been out for around eight."

"Shit," Murphy muttered. "What the fuck is taking so long."

"I think someone let out a bad batch," Connor explained. "Saw the EMTs bring in at least ten different tweakers on stretchers. People who are ambulanced in take priority."

"God, what is wrong with people?" Murphy groaned.

"Don't know," Connor said. "Don't think I ever want to know."

Murphy looked over in the direction of the shouting and saw a young woman in ripped-up jeans and an oversized sweatshirt yelling at the woman behind the desk. He thought the woman looked familiar, but it wasn't until he could clearly hear what she was saying that he realized who she was.

"I have **glass in my hand**!" Her shouts sounded more panicked and afraid than angry. "I need to see a doctor now!"

"And I told you, it's an eight-hour wait." The woman behind the desk was unfazed, having worked her job for many years and seen much worse outbursts over less serious injuries.

Murphy tapped Connor's shoulder and gestured over to the woman arguing with the receptionist.

"Holy shit," Connor said once he recognized her. "Is that…"

"Eleanor?" Murphy finished for him. "Yeah."

"You know what," Ellie told the woman behind the desk. "Fuck it, I'll just wait the eight hours! When I die in the waiting room of blood loss, my family will sue your ass!"

"I look forward to it," the receptionist replied monotonously.

Ellie then turned around to face the crowded waiting room. Her eyes almost immediately landed on the brothers huddled in the back corner and a look of disbelief came over her face. Both brothers waved at her.

"No way," she said as she made her way across the room. "There is no fucking way I'm running into you here."

"Lovely to see you again, too," Murphy said.

"Shit," she said. "I didn't mean it like that. I mean, this is like the third time I've run into you in as many days, and in the freaking **emergency room** of all places? This is just plain freaky."

"Or it's fate." Ellie rolled her eyes at that suggestion. Connor patted the empty chair next to him.

"Have a seat, lass," he said. "You shouldn't be standing if you're injured."

"Is Dr. Connor about to make another appearance?" Murphy asked. "'Cause I'd love to see this."

"Do you want me to hit you with the magazine again?" Connor asked, raising an eyebrow at his brother.

"No," Murphy said, a grin on his face. "I'll be good."

"Damn right you'll be." Connor then looked back over to Ellie, who had yet to sit down. "Come on, lass, sit. Don't worry I only bite Murph here."

"Screw you," Murphy shot back, but he really took no offense. Ellie slowly made her way over to the chair and sat down.

"So, what happened to your hand?" Connor asked. Ellie took a deep breath before explaining.

"I got into a fight with my roommate," she explained. "Like, an actual fight. A lamp fell on the floor and smashed at some point and I tripped, fell, and my hand landed on one of the shards. It's not that bad. I'd stitch it up myself if I wasn't afraid there was still glass stuck in there."

"Jesus," Connor said.

"Why'd you get into a fight with your roommate?" Murphy asked.

"Some bullshit or another," Ellie said. "I don't really remember, and I don't really care. All I know is that the bitch has had it out for me since day one. I sure hope the DA listens to me this time when I request a change of roommate. What about you? Why are you guys here?"

"Well," Connor said. "The other night when Macho Murph here was defending your honor…"

"Connor," Murphy whined, but his brother continued.

"…He got knocked into a table and was out cold for a few good minutes. He was off all day yesterday and passed out last night, so I brought him to the hospital." Ellie skin went pale and her eyes went wide with the explanation.

"Oh my God," she said in shock. "I'm so-"

"MacManus, Murphy?" A nurse called out from the doorway. Connor helped Murphy stand up and the two started walking over to the door. Halfway there, Connor turned around and looked at Ellie, who remained in her seat.

"You coming, lass?" Connor asked.

"Uh, I haven't been…" She started to say, but Connor interrupted.

"The doctor can look at you both," he said. "There's no point in waiting eight hours for a silly injury like that."

"Okay," Ellie said with a nod before jogging to catch up with the brothers.

* * *

A nurse took Murphy's vitals and asked him about the symptoms he had been experiencing. Connor explained to the woman what had happened – obviously leaving out any parts having to do with any illegal activity and giving a story that matched up with the one he told Ellie earlier. The nurse asked a few questions, ranging from how long ago the injury occurred and whether he had taken any medication to try and treat his condition. Murphy admitted that a full day had gone by and that he had taken ibuprofen. The nurse admonished him for waiting so long to come in when he suspected that he had a concussion, and he was informed of the dangers of taking ibuprofen for a head injury.

The nurse then flashed a penlight in Murphy's eyes and confirmed that his pupils weren't reacting. This most likely meant that he was concussed, but he would still need to see a doctor to confirm this diagnosis and to make sure that there was nothing else seriously wrong.

The nurse looked at Ellie's injury as well and assessed that she had at least one shard of glass stuck in there but assured her it could easily be removed with tweezers. She then exited the room, leaving the three of them in an awkward silence while they waited for the doctor. Murphy leaned back on the exam table and covered his eyes with his arm, most likely to ease the pain in his head.

"I'm sorry you got concussed," Ellie eventually said.

"Why are you sorry?" Murphy didn't even look up. "You didn't knock me out cold."

"Yeah," Ellie said. "But I know it's my fault anyway."

"How is it your fault?" He questioned.

"I don't know," She admitted. "It just always is."

"Oh yeah," He said. "Who told you that?"

"Anth-" Her eyes went wide as she caught herself like it was something she wasn't supposed to say. "No one. No one told me that. I just know."

Murphy pulled his arm away from his face and propped himself up on his elbows to get a better look at her. Connor's eyes narrowed as he stared at her.

"No," Connor said. "You were going to say a name. Whose was it?"

"No, I wasn't." Ellie's face became stricken with anxiety. "No one said that to me, it's just something I've always assumed, okay?"

"Elle," Murphy said. "It's pretty clear that you're lying. We're not going to do or say anything bad. Just tell the truth." Ellie looked like she was on the brink of tears, but she nodded before taking a deep breath.

"His name is…" She had to stop as she choked on a sob and contemplated her words. "His name is Anthony. Anthony Costello. He was… He is… He's… He's my boyfriend."

Murphy let out an indignant snort.

"Jesus," he said. "He must be one hell of a boyfriend if he says shit like that to you."

Connor looked like he was about to say something, but Ellie spoke up before he could.

"He…" She said. "He doesn't really say shit like that to me anymore."

"Why?" Murphy said. "Because he's 'not like that anymore?' 'He's a nice guy now?' 'He's changed?' Let me tell you something right now: people like that don't change. They only get worse."

"Lass," Connor said. "You realize you don't have to stay with that guy, right? If he's talking to you like that it isn't long before he-"

"No," Ellie said. "It's not like that. He… He hasn't been around for a while. I haven't seen him in over a year."

Before anyone could say anything else, the doctor walked in. He was an older, overly cheerful man who shook hands with the brothers and Ellie as soon as he walked into the room. He reiterated a lot of the questions the nurse asked earlier, and Connor and Murphy gave much the same responses. Ellie's mind wandered against her will to horrifying places as the same events replayed around her.

* * *

 **Wednesday, March 22nd, 2000**

Once she got over the initial shock of Anthony's little surprise, Ellie did what most rational people would do when confronted of the sight of their boyfriend standing over his brother's murdered corpse with a huge grin on his face: she turned and ran back out the front door. The problem was, though, that Anthony had been anticipating this and within an instant had tackled her to the ground and had pulled both hands behind her back. Ellie struggled to break his grip on her.

"Let go of me, you monster!" she screamed.

"Oh, no you don't." Anthony easily held both of her slender wrists behind her back as he dug through his pockets for something. "You're not going anywhere. You haven't seen the whole surprise."

He then pulled her left hand so that it would be raised behind her back. It was unimaginably painful, and Ellie could've sworn she heard something crack or snap. Still, she tried to shake him off her against the pain but still with very little success. She felt a cold metal ring slip around her wrist and heard a tiny metallic click. Her blood ran cold as she realized that he was handcuffing her. She tried to free her other arm from under his knee before he could do the same to that one. However, he didn't lift his leg off her knee and she was confused when she heard another tiny metallic click seconds later. Anthony then got up, releasing her arm from under his knee and making her realize what he had done; he had handcuffed himself to her.

"Get up." He was now standing above her, pulling on the handcuffs so that way her arm was still raised in the air. It made getting up extremely difficult, trying to do it one-handed while also trying not to risk doing more potential damage to her cuffed arm. As far as she could tell, Anthony pulling it back like that had, at the very least, torn a muscle in her shoulder and when she did finally get up, she had to hold her arm at an awkward angle to avoid irritating the injury.

The entire time she was getting up, Anthony was screaming at her to hurry up. It didn't have the effect he wanted, though. It only made Ellie tremble worse and henceforth slowed her down. She did manage to get to her feet, though.

"What the…" she started to say. "What the fuck? What the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?"

"Dafaq's going on?" Anthony laughed. "I'll tell you what the fuck's going on! Everyone's fucking dead, Ellie!"

"What?" The tremor in her voice only grew with her fear. "No… That can't… You can't mean you… You…"

"I, I, I what Ellie?" Anthony said. "Come on, can't you say it?" He paused for a second to see if she would respond. When he got none, he said gave the answer away himself. "I killed my entire fucking family, bitch!"

"No!" Ellie cried. "No! You couldn't have done that! You wouldn't do that! This is a joke, right?"

"Oh, you don't fucking believe me?" Anthony said. "Come on, I'll prove it to you!" He then began to pull Ellie over towards the stairs by the handcuffs. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Ellie grabbed on to the banister to prevent him from pulling her any further.

"No," she screamed. "I'm not going anywhere with you! You can't make me!"

"Oh, yes I fucking can!" Anthony pulled hard enough on the handcuff that it dug into Ellie's wrist and she had to take a few steps forward to relieve the pressure. However, this put Anthony's face directly into hers. "And guess what?" Ellie then felt something small, cold, circular, and metallic press up against her temple. "If you don't do what I say when I say it, I'm going to kill you, too. Understand?" Ellie only gave a weak nod. " **Understand**?"

"Yes," Ellie squeaked out.

"Good." Anthony then pulled the gun away from her head. "Now come on. You need to see this."

Ellie followed him up the stairs and down a narrow hallway. He stopped in front of the door at the very end to pull out a key.

"I don't know why I locked this," He mused to himself as he turned the key. "A force of habit, I guess? Mom did always value her privacy."

 _Did._ Ellie thought. _Past tense. She can't anymore. She never can again. Privacy will never mean anything to her anymore, nor will anything else. Shit…_

Any bit of mental preparation she did on the journey up the stairs flew out the window as soon as Anthony flipped the bedroom light on. To say that the scene she was met with was brutal would have been an understatement. There were no obvious signs of a struggle. It looked as if she was sleeping when she was initially attacked. She had a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Her face was buried in the pillows, so you couldn't see any of the mess that the bullet made on its way out of her. Her back though was a different story. It was littered with puncture wounds, much like Ryan's chest was. Not a lot of blood had seeped out of the wounds, so it could be easily assumed that the stabbing was done post-mortem. Ellie shook as she took in the whole scene but was unable to get herself to look away.

"You see this, Ellie," Anthony said. " **This** is what happens when you're a fucking lying cheating whore. Bitch told me this whole time when really, I knew the truth. It was always Jake, Jake, Jake! She always loved him more because he was her real son! I was just nothing! Just some ragged-assed kid that they took pity on! Well, who the fuck need your pity now, Mom? Huh? Who?"

The dead woman gave no response and Anthony knocked some bottles off the dresser and they shattered on the floor with a resounding _smash_ that made Ellie jump. He stood there muttering something to himself for several minutes. Ellie made no move to approach him or stop him. She was too transfixed on the mutilated woman. Eventually, Anthony came back to his senses and flicked the bedroom light off.

"Come on," he said. "Let's go. We've still got more to see."

Ellie followed him obediently out of the bedroom and waited as he shut the door and re-locked it. He then started leading her down the narrow hallway again.

"I did her in first," Anthony explained. "She came home from work early complaining of a headache and went upstairs to take a nap. I knew then that was my opportunity. She wouldn't be able to fight back and I could easily catch Dad and Jake off guard as they came home. You see, I didn't want them to see her like that. You know how guys are when they see dead chicks, especially if that chick's their wife or mom or daughter or something. It fills them with a violent rage and they won't stop until the motherfucker that killed her is dead. At least, that's how it is in the movies, and that's the reason I had to stop them from seeing her. As soon as they realized that she was gone, I was a dead man."

Anthony then led Ellie back down the stairs and out into the foyer, where Jake's bloody corpse still laid. Ellie felt the initial shock begin to wear off and sobs began to overtake her body.

"Good ol' Jake here was the first one to come home," Anthony said. "I sat on the stairs waiting for him. As soon as he opened the front door I tackled him. I have to say I'm a little proud of him; he put up a good fight, but it still wasn't enough. I stabbed him until he stopped fighting back, then I put a bullet through his brain to make sure the job was done. Well, I guess there's actually one thing I'm better than him at, and I'm going to cherish this memory forever."

Ellie struggled to breathe as she listened to every single word that came out of his mouth. This couldn't be happening. This had to be a messed-up dream. It **had** to be. Her boyfriend had murdered his mother and brother. That stuff doesn't happen in real life. It just happens in the movies. People aren't monsters in real life. Sure, there are jerks in the world, but in real life, people don't just go out and murder their family members. It just doesn't happen.

"Come on," Anthony said as he pulled on the handcuffs again. "There's one more thing that I want you to see."

Ellie obliged and followed him into the dining room, through the kitchen, and down into a side hallway that led to the garage. She kept trying to prepare herself for the worst, although she knew it would be futile. She knew that what she was about to see was going to be just as brutal as the other two scenes and she knew that there was no way she could mentally prepare herself for something like that.

When Anthony opened the door to the garage, she was slightly relieved to see that the scene was less bloody than the other two, but it was nonetheless just as shocking and disturbing. A man in a charcoal colored business suit laid slumped over in the front seat of his Jaguar. The red dot in the center of his forehead indicated that he had been shot in the head before he even realized what was going on and, fortunately, this was the only shot that was needed to end his life. Ellie stepped forward as close as Anthony would allow her to as she tried to process everything that had been presented to her.

"When I heard my dad pull up, I just walked to the garage, opened the door and shot him." The coldness of Anthony's voice caused a chill to go down Ellie's spine. "I didn't do anything else to him. At that point, all the rage had just left me. I just wanted to be done. That bastard didn't deserve to have any of my breath wasted on him anyway."

Ellie got down on her knees and brought her free hand to her mouth. She had to hold her cuffed hand in the air to be able to stay in that position, but she didn't care about the pain that caused. She just couldn't take it. It was too horrifying. All she could do for several minutes was sit there on the floor of the garage with the body of her boyfriend's dead father in front of her and sob. It felt like it lasted an eternity and the fact that she was handcuffed to the psycho that committed this horrible act only deepened the feelings of dread and horror she had. However, she eventually was able to pull it together enough to ask her lover-turned-captor a question.

"So, are you done?" she asked. "Are you going to kill me?"

Anthony was quiet for much longer than he should have been, causing Ellie to begin to accept the fact that she was probably going to die within the next few minutes.

"I don't know," he finally admitted. "I haven't decided yet."

* * *

 **Tuesday, November 13th, 2001**

Reality came back into focus for Ellie as she felt bile begin to burn at the back of her throat. Suddenly aware of her surroundings, Ellie was aware that the doctor was still talking to Murphy, saying something about while it wasn't wise to take ibuprofen after suffering such a severe head injury, it didn't seem that he was suffering from the symptoms of a cranial hemorrhage, or something or other. The point was he was going to be okay if he just stayed away from ibuprofen and continued to rest. Although a tiny part of her felt relieved to hear that, the rest of her body was focusing its entire attention on not spilling the meager contents of her stomach all over the floor. She looked around her for a trash bin or a sink or something but didn't see either nearby.

 _Shit._ She thought.

Once the doctor finished giving Connor and Murphy instructions on how to treat the stupid concussion, he began to turn and walk out the door. However, he must have caught sight of her pathetic self because he approached her and gently put a hand on her shoulder. Ellie had a hard time resisting the urge to flinch away.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" the doctor asked. "You look like you're about to be sick." Ellie knew that if she opened her mouth, she'd toss her cookies all over the doctor's nice white lab coat, so she just shook her head. "You sure? You look like you've been through the wringer." Ellie just made the universal hand gesture for A-Okay and hoped that the guy would drop it. Fortunately for her, her hopes were well-placed. "Alright, but if you need anything just ask one of the nurses." He then turned back to the brothers. "Linda will be right in to check you boys out and to take care of her hand."

"Alright, thank you, sir," Connor responded, and the doctor soon left. Once he was out the door, Ellie bolted for a bin hanging on the wall labeled "biohazardous material" and emptied the contents of her stomach into it. It didn't take long, seeing as she hadn't eaten anything since the night before, and she mostly just dry heaved rather than bring anything up. As she tried to catch her breath, she vaguely wondered if vomit counted as "biohazardous material" and reasoned that it probably did since Ebola was a thing. She wasn't sure though. She'd have to ask Sky.

Just as she managed to intake and expel oxygen normally again, she became extremely aware of the fact that someone had put their hand on her back and was rubbing soft circles across her shoulder blades. She would have found it soothing had she not remembered she was in the company of two men that she didn't know that well. She quickly straightened up and turned so her back was against the wall, facing the two brothers, both of whom had concerned looks on their faces. The one who had touched her back, though, was evidently Murphy.

"You okay?" He asked. She nodded weakly in response. "What the hell happened?"

"I…" She struggled to find her voice. "I saw… No, I remembered – kind of – something that happened before. …And I didn't like it."

"What?" Murphy's voice was gentle as he said that, Ellie had a hard time deciding whether it was a good idea to state what happened that night aloud. "It's alright, Elle. Whatever it is, it's alright." The assurance sounded so good to her, and the fact that the look in his blue eyes seemingly backed it up only made it seem better (or worse depending on your perspective).

 _Aw, screw it._

"He… He…" She swallowed, trying to regain control of her voice. "My boyfriend, he… He killed… He killed his parents and brother."

* * *

 **Just a fair warning, I'm not going to be on Tumblr for a few days because I'm trying to avoid _Infinity War_ spoilers. So, if you need to get in contact with me, please do it on here, my DeviantART, or on Twitter. The extended author's note is on my Blogspot already, so be sure to check that out! :)**

 **I know it seems a little weird to post today since this definitely isn't an Avengers-related fic but blame Marvel. I was going to post an Avengers-related fic next week, but they had to move up the date of the _Infinity War_ release and screwed up my posting schedule. So, sorry about that.**

 **Remember kids, it all started with an idea...**

* * *

 **This chapter was originally posted on 4/27/18.**


	7. The Killing Joke

**Welcome, ladies and gentleman, to my seven-day fic posting marathon! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!**

* * *

 **Wednesday, November 14th, 2001**

Ellie was in a full-blown panic when she finally awoke and was even more panicked to find that she couldn't move her limbs at all. A ball of ice-cold dread settled in her stomach as she began to fear that Anthony had done something to her; drugged her or something to make it impossible for her to move and resist as he did whatever sick acts his dastardly mind thought up. However, after a few moments she began to regain feeling in her arms and legs and realized that she had just suffered through some form of sleep-paralysis and all the events that proceeded her waking was a dream.

At least, it was a dream now. It wasn't back then.

Ellie got up slowly and carefully. She had heard somewhere that if you woke up to quickly from sleep-paralysis, you could die. Although that didn't really make a whole lot of sense, so she made a mental note to ask Sky about it next time she saw her. Sky would know. Sky knew everything.

As her eyes adjusted to the dim light of her dorm room, the first sight she had the pleasure of seeing was that of her overweight roommate completely naked, passed out and sprawled out spread eagle on the bed. Ellie immediately cringed away from the sight and fled the bedroom, all the while thinking: _I am not staying in that room! Christ that must be sexual harassment! It just **must** be._

Ellie quickly took refuge in the bathroom, immediately splashing cold water on her face and attempting to wash out her eyes with hand soap. It stung like hell and did nothing to rid her mind of the disturbing images she had just been faced with, both in her dreams and her own dorm room, but in some disturbing way, it felt good, just like her admission to Connor and Murphy earlier that day.

Ellie took a deep breath and slowly released it.

 _My boyfriend killed his parents and brother._ She had never been able to say that statement aloud before. It technically wasn't necessary. The police had found plenty of physical evidence at the scene that implicated Anthony as the killer. They had him on the FBI's most wanted list until she called the police at Quincy Quarries. However, none of that reassured her. It just made her feel worse.

Ellie hadn't spoken of the things she saw that day or what she had to do to escape. No one pressured her to, either. The police knew exactly what happened and weren't going to press any charges against her. However, the horror of the rest of those two days from hell had only amplified in her mind with every day that went by. She knew she couldn't hold out much longer. She knew she was either going to break tell someone every nasty little detail of the whole ordeal, or she was going to have to die and to be honest; she wasn't entirely sure which was the better option.

* * *

"Anthony Costello," Smecker's voice said through the hazy connection of the aging public payphone. Connor was holding the phone while both he and Murphy each pressed one ear up against the receiver to hear what he was saying. It wasn't the ideal location for such a sensitive phone call, but the phone in their apartment was connected to a party line for the entire building and neither of them really understood cell phones, so, unfortunately, they had to make do with this.

"Born September 18th, 1978," Smecker continued. "Died at the age of twenty-two. He killed his adoptive parents Frank and Lydia Costello and his younger adoptive brother Jacob. His girlfriend killed him in self-defense after he kidnapped her and showed her the bodies of his victims."

"Christ," Connor muttered. Both brothers were taken aback by the heinousness of Ellie's ex-boyfriend's actions. Killing your family and showing off the bodies to your girlfriend? Who does that? It was just sick and depraved. Pushing that aside, Murphy focused in on Ellie's supposed act of self-preservation.

"Are you sure about that?" Murphy asked. "She… We met his girlfriend and she talked about him like he was still alive."

"Absolutely sure," Smecker said. "She gave a sobbing confession on the phone, crime scene techs did an on-the-spot GSR test, the blood-splatter patterns were consistent with the account she had made, and an autopsy had been done. All of the evidence placed her as the killer and circumstantial and psychological evidence proved that it was an act of self-defense, so she was never charged with the crime."

"But then why would she talk about him like he was still alive?" Connor asked.

"Grief?" Smecker suggested. "Trauma? Remorse? Regret? Guilt? She's most likely in denial about the whole thing. A lot of people in these kinds of situations are."

"We weren't." Murphy pointed out.

"Most of the time those people don't deal with the fall out of such a traumatic experience by resolving to kill all the low-life scumbags in Boston." He did have a point there. Although technically it was a mission from God, neither brother felt like correcting him at that moment. "Look, this girl's been through some really horrible shit. It's understandable that she might just be pretending they're still together and he's still alive to be able to cope. I would suggest she talk to a shrink about it immediately if she hasn't already, but you've got to just let her deal with it in her own way." Both brothers made noises of agreement.

"Thanks for the help, Smecker," Connor said. "You're not going to get in trouble for this, right?"

"If anyone asks I'll just say I was planning on using the case file as an example for one of my classes before scrapping the idea," Smecker assured. "Not a big deal. Happens all the time."

"Alright," Connor said. "You take care of yourself."

"You boys, too." With that, the call ended. Connor hung the phone back up on the receiver before turning back to Murphy.

"So, what do you think?" Murphy had brought his thumbnail to his mouth as he considered the situation.

"I think it's fucked up, that's what I think," Connor said. "Christ, who does that to a person, especially their girlfriend?"

"I don't know," Murphy said. "But I'm glad the fucker's dead."

"Couldn't agree with you more, brother." Connor took two cigarettes out of his coat pocket, lit them both, and then handed one off to Murphy.

"So, what do we do?" Murphy asked after taking a nice, long drag off his cigarette.

"Don't know," Connor said. "This is the one situation where killing the prick won't solve the problem. She already beat us to that."

"Aye," Murphy agreed. "But I wish I could do something for her. Living with that every day… Christ, that's some hard shit. If I could do something – anything – to make it easier on her…"

"I get it," Connor said. "Believe me, Murph, I get it."

The two brothers then walked in silence back to their apartment.

* * *

 **Monday, November 19th, 2001**

Murphy didn't hear from Ellie for a few days. He wasn't surprised by that. He figured that she needed a few days to cool off after the emotional upheaval of the events of the other day. He didn't mind it either. He still had that concussion to get rid of, though things had improved since he'd been to the doctor. With fluids, rest, and acetaminophen-based painkillers, he no longer had that agonizing headache. However, he still felt tired and dizzy, meaning that he hadn't fully gotten rid of the concussion and still needed to take it easy.

Still, Murphy had not thought about anything but Ellie over the next few days. Although he had given her his and Connor's home number after they tried to take her out to Burger King to cheer her up (which failed miserably) she still hadn't called. So, for the next few days, Murphy just laid in bed and waited for the phone to ring.

When it finally did, though, he let it ring a few times to make sure that they weren't calling for someone else in the building before picking up. He was ecstatic when he heard Ellie's voice at the other end of the line.

 _Guess she's had enough time to cool off,_ he thought.

"Hi." Although Ellie sounded like she was in much better spirits than she was the other day, she there was a certainly tired slur to her voice that concerned Murphy a little bit. He hoped she wasn't drunk dialing him, or worse calling him from some seedy bar in hopes that he would come and rescue her again. He would if she asked – and she would – he just didn't particularly feel like getting another concussion when he was just getting over the first one.

"Hey Elle," he said. "What's up?"

"Ah, not much," she said. "Just school…"

"Are you okay? You sound …out of it." That was more polite than saying "completely shattered".

"Yeah." Ellie was unable to keep the grogginess out of her voice as she responded. "I'm sorry. I haven't gotten that much sleep. I've been busy studying."

"Oh, really?" Murphy said.

"Mm-hmm," Ellie hummed. "I have a test first thing tomorrow morning, which sucks because it's almost Thanksgiving and I won't be able to get home as early as I'd like but if I don't pass this test I probably won't pass the semester and I would've wasted two grand of the government's money. Although I probably shouldn't be worried about wasting the government's money at this point, I'd rather not waste any more than I already have, and so I'm studying until my brain fries of an overload of information on journalistic ethics. …Or I die from lack of sleep. Whichever comes first."

"Oh," Murphy said, trying to disguise the fact that he just barely followed all of that. "If that's the case then I'll let you go."

"No," Ellie said. "You don't have to. I'm taking a break right now. I just called because I'm stressed, lonely, exhausted, and in desperate need of contact with the outside world. I haven't talked to anyone other than Julie since Friday."

"Why not?" Murphy asked.

"I think it's because everyone here is afraid to talk to me," Ellie admitted. "The other day I kind of freaked out and screamed at my roommate and a bunch of other people and now everyone's afraid to come near me. I can't even buy food because every time I approach the checkout guy in the cafeteria, he looks like he's afraid that I'm about to shank him in the pancreas."

"That sucks," Murphy said. "Do you want me to come over?"

"What?" Ellie hadn't been expecting that.

"Yeah," Murphy said. "I mean, it sounds like you're bored out of your mind over there and I haven't really done much of anything the past few days, so I'm definitely bored out of my mind."

"Alright," she said. "If you want to come down here, you're going to want to take the Red Line going southbound towards Braintree. Do you know where Wollaston Station is?"

"Hold on," Murphy said. "Let me get a pen."

Shortly afterwards, Murphy found himself leaving with the intention of going to Eastern Nazarene College spend time with a terrified young woman traumatized by her familicidal boyfriend and the murder of said familicidal boyfriend, because he felt he had to make her feel better and because he might just be a little attracted to her but he wasn't going to admit that reason aloud. He only left behind a note for Connor explaining where he'd gone off to and began to follow the directions Ellie gave him.

 _Dear Lord, please let this work._

* * *

Murphy was aware of the security guards eyeing him from the moment he set foot on Eastern Nazarene College property. Honestly, he didn't blame them. There were a lot of young, vulnerable girls attending this school, and anyone with two eyes could infer that he was trouble from twenty miles away. It was a good thing, they were doing their jobs and hopefully, that would prevent someone from becoming another victim. At least, he tried to tell himself that as the worry that they'd remembered those police sketches from the news two years ago and realized they had a wanted killer on the premises. That was something he worried about every time he went out in public now. Thus far, no one had recognized neither him nor Connor from the drawings (most likely because whoever had drawn the damn things apparently had never seen a human face before) but you never knew who would remember what, when, so Murphy found himself on edge every time someone stared at him for too long.

Despite the staring, no one made any move to stop him as he walked right past the security booth like Ellie told him to, walked past the first set of dorms, and began to keep his eyes open for a building on the right labeled Williamson. The directions she had given him had been pretty easy to follow at first, but like any true Bostonian she had given the directions based on the locations of several different Dunkin' Donuts and made it easy to get confused which Dunkin's was which, to which point he had to actually stop in one of these donut shops and ask the girls behind the counter for directions, only to have them give him directions based once again on the locations of several different Dunkin' Donuts. He just ended up walking up and down Hancock street for twenty minutes before someone had the decency to note that the sign for the street he was looking for was hidden behind a Rockland Trust building and he had probably passed it several times.

So, Murphy arrived much later than he expected or intended. Luckily for him, Ellie was right there to open the door for him as he began to walk up to the building.

"Hey," she called out as she held open the door. "Where've you been?"

"Doing some sightseeing around Quincy." Ellie gave him a perplexed look. "You forgot to mention that one of the street signs was hidden behind a bank."

"Shit," she cursed. "I knew I was forgetting something. Sorry."

"It's alright," Murphy admitted. "On the bright side, I got to see what the inside of every single Dunkin' Donuts in this town looks like."

"Ooo!" There was a delighted lilt to Ellie's voice as a smile graced her face. Murphy had to admit that the expression suited her. "Did you get me anything?"

"No." Murphy felt a little disappointment as that smile turned into a pout. It was clear that it was just a playful one, but he still wished he hadn't made her expression change. "I didn't even get anything for myself. Besides, I don't know what you like."

"Well," Ellie said. "I have to say that you have just committed an act of blasphemy by entering a Dunkin' Donuts and not buying anything. For shame, Murphy MacManus! Didn't your parents raise you right?"

"Trust me," Murphy said. "If I had committed an actual act of blasphemy, my mother would have rushed all the way here from Ireland, dragged me straight to the gates of Heaven, and have me grovel and beg for God's forgiveness."

"Well," Ellie said. "For future reference, I like French vanilla iced coffee with extra cream and extra sugar. You know, so you don't commit any more horrifying acts that go against the name of our good and gracious Lord."

"Noted," Murphy said.

"Alright then," she said. "Follow me." Ellie then walked over to a series of tables and chairs set up for students to read, eat, and study at. Murphy followed her over to one that was cluttered with several textbooks and notebooks, along with several empty cans of Red Bull.

"Looks like you're really dedicated to this not sleeping thing," he remarked.

"Yeah…" A self-conscious tone of guilt was evident in her voice. "I've heard you're not supposed to drink more than two of these, but I've had an entire six-pack and I feel fine." Murphy couldn't help but notice at this point that her hands were shaking a little bit.

"You sure about that?" Murphy asked.

"Yep," Ellie said as she sat down in the seat that had a black backpack dangling precariously from it. Murphy took the one across from it.

"So, do you need any help with this stuff?" he asked.

"Nah," she said. "I'm just reviewing the same crap I've read a billion times since September. I just called 'cause I was bored. You're the one who invited yourself over."

"Fair point," he said. "I can still help you with this stuff, though."

"I doubt it," she said.

"Why's that?" he asked.

"I can tell you've never been to college," she said. "Never mind taken a single course in journalistic ethics."

"Really," he said. "How's that?"

"You really want to know?" A smirk crossed Ellie's face.

"I'm not sure now." Murphy smiled. Ellie briefly flashed one back but quickly pulled it back.

"I could tell by your eyes," she said. "They don't look like the ones of someone who's gone through four years of hell trying to slave their way through their degree."

"Oh yeah?" he said. "And what does that look like?"

"Like their soul has been crushed and they've had the life sucked out of them." Ellie snorted a little bit at that. Murphy felt his smile widen a little bit out the sound.

"So you're still trying with this whole college thing," Murphy said.

"Well yeah," Ellie said. "It's my senior year. I'm kind of in too deep to give up now."

"Even though you don't like what you're studying." Ellie's face fell.

"Yeah…" she said. "I know it's stupid, but I've already wasted three and a half years. Might as well follow through."

"What happens after you follow through?" Ellie's face scrunched up in confusion.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"What happens after you follow through?" Murphy asked. "I mean, you have to have a plan for after you graduate."

"I don't know," Ellie admitted, trying to look more invested with her notes than the conversation. "I haven't really thought about that."

"So you don't have any plans?" Murphy asked. "You're not going anywhere or doing anything?"

"No," she said. "Not really. I just want to get over this hump and figure things out from there."

"Alright," Murphy said.

"What would you do?" Ellie asked suddenly. "If you could go anywhere or do anything, what would you do?"

"That's easy," Murphy said. "I wouldn't go anywhere. I'm already where I want to be and doing what I want to do."

"Should I be flattered?" Ellie was smirking again, but her bangs were falling in her face so Murphy couldn't see her eyes. Something told him that was intentional.

"Yes," Murphy smirked himself. "And no. Believe me, you're a beautiful girl and I enjoy talking to you, but that wasn't what I was talking about."

"Oh?" Ellie grinned. "And what would that be?" It was then that it hit Murphy that he said more than he should have, on more than one count.

"I mean," he said. "I'm already in the place I need to be and doing what I was meant to do. I couldn't ask for any more than that."

"You're lucky," Ellie said. "To have your shit figured out like that… I envy you."

"I wouldn't say I have my shit figured out per say," Murphy said. "I just know I'm where I'm supposed to be. Other than that, I don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time."

"That sounds pretty figured out to me." She began to scribble something down in her notebook. Murphy waited until she was finished to try and start up the conversation again.

"So," he said after a few minutes of silence with by. "have you been anywhere interesting?"

"What do you mean?" In those few minutes of silence, she had become completely engrossed in her studying, so it wasn't likely she was fully paying attention when he asked the question.

"Since you're unsure about where you want to go," Murphy said. "it might help to think about where you've been."

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I've lived in Massachusetts my whole life. Springfield, Lawrence, Newton… Other than New Hampshire, I've never seen any other state."

"Have you ever left the country?" he asked.

"Almost, a few times," she said. "Someone tried to take me to Canada when I was sixteen, but we got stopped at the border because I didn't have my passport. Then, later, that same person tried to take me to Jamaica with him, but… Plans changed." It didn't take Murphy much effort to guess at who the person she was referring to was. He was going to question her further about those incidents when Ellie started talking again. "I did leave the country once, though. I went to Spain on a school trip my senior year of high school."

"Really?" Murphy's interest was piqued. "Do you know any Spanish."

"¡Por supuesto!" She very clearly had an American accent, but it was clear she understood what she was saying, even if some of the grammar and syntax wasn't entirely correct. "Pero, no yo soy como bien como solía estoy."

"No sé," Murphy said. "No me suenas mal."

"¿Tú entiendo Español?" Ellie perked up, her attention drawn away from the notes.

"Sí," he said.

"Impresionante," she said. "Haces sabes alguno otro el lenguaje?"

"Sí," he said. "Is féidir liom Gaeilge a labhairt, et Français, und Deutsch, i Russkiy, e Italiano. Scio quosdam Latine, but probably not enough to carry a conversation." Ellie shrugged.

"I don't think you have to worry about that," she said. "It's a dead language after all." Murphy nodded in agreement. "That is impressive, though. How did you learn all of that?"

"Paid attention in school," Murphy said nonchalantly.

"Wow," Ellie said. "What school did you go to? Mine only offered Spanish, French, and Latin."

"Our mother also insisted that we learn as many languages as possible," he admitted.

"Really," she said. "How come?"

"Just thought it was a good idea," Murphy said. "You never know where in the world you're going to end up."

"Plus, it'd probably help with jobs and stuff," Ellie pointed out. "By the way, that reminds me, what do you do?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"For work," she clarified. "What do you do for work?"

"You've asked me that before," he pointed out.

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm just curious. You said you're doing what you're meant to do. I was just wondering what that was."

"Yeah…" He hoped it was clear that he didn't really want to talk about this. Sure, he wasn't ashamed of what he did as a Saint, but he was smarter than to tell every single person he exchanged two words with about the mission that God sent him and Connor on. In fact, at this point, it was an incredible stroke of luck that they hadn't been identified from those sketches the police put on the news. Admittedly, though, he had kind of shot himself in the foot on that one. He was the one that brought it up, so of course, she'd ask about it. He tried to think of an excuse to get out of the conversation when Ellie spoke up again.

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," she said. "There are a lot of topics that I don't like being brought up for one reason or another. I get it."

"Really," he said. "Like what?"

"Well, my boyfriend, obviously," she started. "the Quarries, dogs, _the Matrix_ , car accidents… A lot of weird stuff."

"That certainly is an interesting list," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "A lot of fucked up shit's happened to me. …Not _the Matrix_ , though. That movie just sucked."

"I've never heard of _the Matrix_ ," Murphy said.

"Wow," Ellie said. "Where were you in 1999?"

"Nowhere important," other than executing many the top mafia bosses in Boston and outrunning the police.

"Yeah, well, so was I," Ellie said. "Just going to college and trying to take things one day at a time."

"I'm sure that wasn't easy," Murphy said. "considering what you had to deal with."

"Yeah," Ellie said.

"Have you ever tried talking to anyone about it?" he asked. "I mean, I know you don't like talking about it but have you ever told anyone anything."

"Well, yeah," she said. "I've told Julie some things. …Sky, too. It's just… I can't talk about that night at all. It's too much. I get scared. Even if I'm talking to a psychologist or some other kind of trained professional, I get scared."

"Why?" He really couldn't understand this. How could she be afraid when the animal who did this to her was dead? It didn't make sense.

"Because…" Ellie put her hand on her forehead, raking her bangs back. "I just can't. Living through that once is enough. I just can't. If I told anyone, it would just make the whole thing more terrifying. I can promise you that.

"He can't hurt you though, right?" Ellie nodded. "And if he or anyone else tries to hurt you again, **I can promise you** they won't ever get the chance."

"Thanks." Ellie wiped at her eyes. "That really means a lot – even though I don't know you that well. It's just… It's not like… I… I… I'm sorry, can we just drop the subject? I feel like I'm about to cry and I really don't want to do that right now."

"Alright," Murphy relented, but he honestly didn't like it. He didn't like the fact that this guy hurt her and she still wouldn't tell anyone what happened to him; that she was still so afraid of him; but most of all, he didn't like the dark feeling all of this was putting in his gut. Imagine what it had to be like for her, the person who lived through it.

* * *

 **Yes, I am going to be posting for seven days straight this week, but it's not going to be seven straight days of updating this fic. I'm planning on updating this today, tomorrow, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. What am I going to do the other two days? Well, you'll see...**

 **Remember kids, I swear to shake it up if you swear to listen!**

* * *

 **Originally posted to FFN on 4/29/18.**


	8. Stay the Night

**[Insert some witty comment here.] I'm in a rush. I just want to get this uploaded ASAP.**

* * *

 **Monday, November 19th, 2001**

The next few hours were quiet between the two of them. Ellie just focused on her studying the whole time. Murphy wasn't sure if she wanted him to leave or not, but she didn't expressly say she wanted him to go, so he stayed. To be honest, Murphy didn't realize how much time had passed until he heard someone shout "hey, Braden!" At that point, he looked up and saw that the sky had gone from being slightly grey to a deep, dark black. He internally groaned. In his note he told Connor he'd only be gone a couple of hours. His brother was probably worried sick by now.

Meanwhile, Ellie externally groaned and rolled her eyes as she turned to look at the person who called for her.

"Yeah, Dawn," she said. "What is it?"

"Visiting hours are over," the short, boisterous woman said. "You need to tell your little boyfriend to go home."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." The enthusiasm was practically oozing from her voice.

"Don't 'yeah, sure, whatever," me," the other woman sassed back. "Say goodbye to your friend and get your ass up to your dorm. Curfew is in one hour."

"Okay, thanks." Ellie once again rolled her eyes as she turned back to Murphy. "Sorry about that. She's a bitch."

"What was she saying, though?" Murphy asked. "Something about visiting hours being over?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention to the time."

"Why, what time is it?" he asked.

"Late." She looked around for a clock on the wall, but failed to spot one. "Don't know the exact time… Shit! You took the train here! What time does that stop?"

"Ah, it's probably still going," Murphy said. "Don't worry about it."

"Yeah," she said. "But I'd hate to make you walk home in the cold and dark." Murphy could see in her eyes that wasn't the full truth.

"You want me to stay," he said.

"Kind of, yeah," she admitted.

"Visiting hours are over," Murphy pointed out.

"Yeah," Ellie said. "That doesn't mean you have to leave, though." Murphy quirked up an eyebrow.

"What do you have in mind?" A mischievous grin then graced Ellie's face.

"Tell me," she said. "Do heights make you nervous in any way, shape, or form?"

* * *

Murphy gripped on to the railing tightly as he scaled the fire escape. He had no problem with heights at all, he just had a problem with the flimsy materials the builders used to make the fire escape. The thing was really rickety and he could swear he could actually feel it bending under his weight, and considering the fact that he was a healthy weight for his height, that was alarming. He could only imagine what would happen in the event of a fire.

Luckily for him, he only had to go up one floor. Ellie said she knew someone that probably would let him in, the keyword being probably. Apparently, this girl had reason to be angry with her right now, so there was a possibility that he just climbed up this incredibly unstable fire escape for nothing.

He'd also probably be worrying Connor for no reason. He wasn't sure why he was doing this. He knew that if he tried to push Ellie to talk now, he'd just get shut down and thrown out. There was no reason to stay, and yet he was. He couldn't explain it, but he just liked being around her. Even though he didn't know her that well, he just felt oddly at ease with her. He couldn't explain it, and he didn't want to have it explained. He just wanted to spend some more time with her. That's all he knew. Whether or not this was an issue he should be concerned about could be dealt with at another time.

Murphy breathed a sigh of relief as he reached the platform for the second floor. Looking through the window, he saw a brunette girl open the door to her dorm room and be greeted by Ellie on the other side. Judging by their body language, the brunette girl wasn't happy to see Ellie there and Ellie was apologizing and trying to explain the situation to her. When Ellie gestured towards the window, Murphy took that as his cue to knock at it. The brunette girl immediately turned around, and after rolling her eyes began to walk towards the window. She said something he couldn't understand as she undid the latches, but it became clear that it was directed at Ellie as soon as the window came open.

"Like I said, Oswin," Ellie said. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. I was just in a really fucked up mental state. If there's anything I can do to make it up to you…"

"Do you still have a full charge card?" Oswin asked Ellie as Murphy stepped into the room.

"But does it still have money on it?" At that Ellie verbally groaned and took what like a regular credit card, but clearly had the words "student meal pass" printed on it in big, bold letters out of her back pocket.

"I'm going to starve because of you," Ellie said as she handed over the card. "I just want you to know that."

"Yep, and I don't care." Oswin slid the card into a desk drawer. "Just be grateful that's all I'm asking for."

"Yeah, whatever," Ellie muttered before turning on her heel and going back out into the hallway. "Come on, Murphy. My room's this way."

Murphy gave Oswin a quick thank you before following Ellie out into the hallway. She went past two or three sets of doors before turning into a room with an open door at the other end of the hall. He followed closely behind and was somewhat shocked when he saw the state of her room. He expected that, like most stereotypical college students, the entire place would be an absolute disorganized trash heap. Instead, what he found a room that was so thoroughly clean and organized that he wasn't entirely sure that people had ever set foot in it. Her books were even coordinated by author, title, and order of release. The only thing that looked as if it hadn't been washed in a bit was the large white board that hung over her bunk bed. It looked like it had been written on and erased many times. Currently, however, it had a quote written on it, but Murphy neither recognized the quote or the author and work it was attributed to.

"I am writing a list of tragic character flaws on my dollar bills with a felt pen. I am thinking of the people in my universe and distilling each of these people the one flaw in their character that will be their downfall – the flaw that will be their undoing. What I write are not sins; I write tragedies." – _Shampoo Planet_ , Douglass Coupland.

Murphy was just about to ask about the quote when Ellie suddenly spoke up.

"Do you want anything to drink?" she asked. "I don't have any soda. I'd offer to buy some but as you just witnessed, my charge card has been taken from me and I'm completely tapped for cash right now, so I can't really go out and buy any, sorry. However, I do have…" She paused to open the door to the mini fridge underneath her bunk and look inside. "Five bottles of water, an unopened BJ's-sized pack of apple juice, and… What I think is a half-drunk can of iced tea that could be from as far back as three months ago… Crap, that's disgusting. Don't take that last suggestion seriously. I've got to throw that out and clean this whole thing."

"Water would be fine." That seemed like the safest option, given the other two just sounded plain disgusting and was disgusting respectively.

"Alright." She reached into the refrigerator and held out a medium-sized bottle of water to him. "Come on in, make yourself at home. I promise, nothing's going to suddenly pop out of nowhere and bite you." Murphy shrugged and took off his shoes. It didn't look like she had a rule against wearing shoes in the room as she was doing it herself right there and then, but the room was so clean that he felt like it was the only polite thing to do.

"I didn't realize that was a possibility," Murphy remarked as he took the bottle from her. Ellie immediately began to remove the remaining water bottles and a large plastic-wrapped collection of juice boxes from the fridge and put them off to the side.

"Trust me," she said, standing up and taking the half-dunk iced tea can to the sink. "Anything's fucking possible around here."

As she emptied out the can, Murphy took the opportunity to sit down on her bed and observe more of his surroundings. One of the first things that he noticed was that the other side of the room was much more dirty and cluttered compared to Ellie's and the décor style was drastically different.

"Someone else live here?" he asked.

"Yeah." Ellie had finished dumping out the can and threw it in the trash, before retrieving a spray bottle full of knock-off Windex and a roll of paper towels from a cabinet above. "I have a roommate, but – thankfully – she already went home for the holiday."

"Oh." He was confused as to what holiday was smack-dab in the middle of November when he remembered American Thanksgiving. He and Connor never bothered to celebrate it beyond getting shit-faced drunk with Rocco and the rest of the guys down at McGinty's. He was mildly disappointed when he took a sip of his drink and found that it hadn't magically changed from water to beer. "Why haven't you gone back yet?"

"Like I said, I have a test." She kneeled in front of the mini-fridge and sprayed it from top to bottom with the off-brand cleaning products. "It'd be too much of a pain in the ass to go home only to come back again Monday and have to drive back again after the test."

"Ah." Murphy nodded before taking another sip of his drink. "So, what are you planning on doing for the holiday?"

"Not much, really," Ellie said as she scrubbed vigorously with the paper towels. "My sister's coming back up from Philadelphia, so it'll be awesome to see her again. Plus, Val – my adoptive mother Lori's sister – is coming down with her kids, so that'll be fun I guess… Until we must eat dinner. It's Val's turn to cook this year and she likes to, um, experiment with different recipes…"

"That sounds…" Murphy stopped because he honestly didn't know what to say to that.

"I know," Ellie said. "Just pray for me. Pray for us all."

"Oh, come on," Murphy said. "It can't be that bad."

"Mayonnaise Roasted Turkey," was all Ellie said in response.

"What's that?" Although he asked, Murphy wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.

"It's what Val made for Thanksgiving two years ago," she said. "It's supposed to be a turkey seasoned with a mixture of mayonnaise and herbs, but Val failed to read past the title of the Redbook article and proceeded to attempt to make some sort of disaster completely coated and stuffed with a mixture of mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, and chives. Tyler tried a piece and immediately threw up. We ended up ordering Chinese takeout that night."

"That sounds like the most disgusting thing I've ever heard of," Murphy said, wincing at the thought of such a concoction.

"Nah," Ellie said. "The dinner she made Christmas of '94 definitely tops that."

"What'd she make Christmas of '94?" Murphy dared to ask.

"We don't speak of it." Murphy hoped she was joking, but the grave tone of her voice told him otherwise.

Murphy was able to finish his water in a few gulps, then threw the water bottle into the trash he saw Ellie throw the can into earlier. He then asked where the nearest payphone was so he could make a call, but Ellie insisted that he use her cell phone instead.

"Who're you trying to call?" She inquired.

"Just want to check in with Connor," he said. "Let him know where I'm at."

"Okay," she said. "No problem. I have your home number saved in my contacts, just so you know."

Murphy nodded as she handled the small, black device to him. He had no idea what contacts were or even how to get into them if he did, so he just dialed the number from memory. It rang a few times before a woman's voice answered the phone. Realizing it was one of their neighbors, Murphy spent the next five minutes convincing the woman that he wasn't a bill collector and to go upstairs and give the phone to his brother. It was starting to become apparent that they needed to re-evaluate this whole party line thing.

"Hello, Murph?" Murphy was slightly relieved at hearing his brother's voice. He didn't sound as worried as Murphy thought he would be.

"Hey, Con," Murphy said in response.

"Hold on," Connor said. "Let me switch the call over to our phone. I need to give this one back to the lass."

"Don't take too long," Murphy remarked.

"Shut it," Connor grumbled. Shortly after Murphy heard another phone clicking on the line. "Hey, you still there?"

"Still here," Murphy confirmed.

"Good," Connor said. "Don't hang up." Murphy then heard the other phone hang up, a brief conversation between Connor and the neighbor, and the door of their apartment clicking shut. "So, what's up?"

"Not much," Murphy said. "I'm still at the college."

"Are you still talking to Ellie?" Connor asked.

"Aye," Murphy said.

"Right," Connor said. "So what time do you think you're coming home?"

"Don't know yet," Murphy said.

"Don't know yet?" Connor questioned. "Isn't it a school night? Doesn't she need to be in bed?"

"Shut it." Even as the words came out of his mouth, Murphy knew they were going to be in vain.

"Or are you going to be staying there to make sure she finds it okay?" Murphy wished he could smack that grin right off Connor's face. Unfortunately, at this point that would most likely involve a lengthy bus ride.

"Shut it," Murphy said again. "That's not what this is about."

"You feeling okay?" Connor asked, just making sure.

"Aye," Murphy responded.

"Is your head bothering you?" Connor asked.

"No," Murphy said.

"Alright," Connor said. "Just make sure you take something if it does."

"I will," Murphy said. "I'll talk to you later."

"Talk to you later," Connor reciprocated. "Bye."

"Bye." Murphy hit the little red "end call" button before handing it back to Ellie, who had just finished up scrubbing down the fridge. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Ellie stuck the phone into her back pocket. "You know, you can leave at any time. I'm not keeping you locked up here. In fact, I'm just going to be studying the rest of the night, and you already know that's pretty boring…"

"Nah," Murphy said. "I think I'm going to stay a while longer if that's alright with you."

"Yeah," Ellie said. "Of course, that's fine. Feel free to do anything. I don't have a TV in here, but I have a CD player right here on my desk if you want to listen to music."

"That actually sounds good." Ellie then handed him a round, silver, portable CD player and a pair of headphones. Murphy made himself comfortable on the bed and popped the device open. He vaguely recognized the name on the CD, but he didn't think he'd heard anything from them before. Just as he was about to hit the play button, Ellie spoke up.

"Thank you," she said. "I don't know what your brother said, but… Thank you."

"No problem," Murphy said. "He didn't mean to take it that far, though."

"Yeah, but still, thank you." Murphy only nodded in response and let her get back to her studying as he hit the play button.

 _"Teenage angst has paid off well…"_

* * *

 **Tuesday, November 20th, 2001**

It's warm for once, was the first conscious thought Murphy had that morning. He wasn't entirely awake yet. His eyes were still shut, and his breathing was still shallow. He didn't feel any urgency to get up. He was fully content to let himself slowly awaken and enjoy a nice, peaceful morning for once.

However, reality came crashing in when he shifted positions and felt something soft and foamy slide off his ear. Squinting against the harsh morning light he sat up a bit to see a pair of headphones fall off his head and into his lap. Connected to them by a short amount of wire was a CD player – the digital double dashes on the small display indicating that the disk inside had finished playing some time ago. Looking up, Murphy took in his surroundings and quickly came to the observation that he wasn't in his and Connor's apartment as per usual. That explained how warm it was. Their apartment was much draftier than this.

All at once, the events of the previous night came crashing back to him and it didn't strike Murphy as much of a shock when he turned and saw Ellie lying asleep next to him. Relaxing a little bit now that he knew what was going on, he laid back down on the bed and turned to face her. He was debating on whether to wake her up when he noticed something on her left shoulder.

He couldn't tell what it was given that the strap of her tank-top was partially covering it, but it was very clear that she had a tattoo on her left shoulder. In fact, after that he quickly came to notice she had multiple tattoos in different places on her body. That surprised him. Well, not exactly. He knew she had **a** tattoo. He had caught a glimpse of one on the inside of her right wrist (which read "love" in what looked like someone's cursive handwriting) many times after her shirt sleeve fell, but he never would have thought she'd have several.

In addition to the one on her shoulder and the one on her wrist, she had one on her hip that was half-exposed by her pulled up tank top and looked like some strange alien symbol, and a thin black band around her left bicep. It was only when his eyes skimmed over the one on her left arm that he noticed one the more alarming features of her exposed skin.

It looked like someone tried to use a giant hole puncher on her upper arm and there was a thin line of discolored skin connecting the two holes. It bisected the band, causing the tattoo to look slightly malformed and indicated that the injury was sustained after she had gotten the tattoo. The wounds looked skillfully and precisely cut into her skin, so either she forgot to mention that Mr. Douchebag Family-Killer was also a doctor, or that Mr. Douchebag Family-Killer injured her in such a way that required surgical treatment. Either way, it only made his anger towards the guy increase, which he hadn't thought was possible.

He then noticed that those weren't the only scars she had. All up and down the same arm she had what looked to be bite marks. He was going get mad at her ex again when he realized that the bite marks weren't human. It looked like an animal had bit her multiple times and she didn't get proper treatment right away, causing an immense amount of scarring. It didn't look painful, though. In fact, every one of the scars looked like they had begun to fade with time, so it was most likely something that had happened to her years ago – maybe even as a child.

His anger towards Anthony quickly changed to sympathy for Ellie as he continued to watch her sleep. It was clear that she had already put up with so much in her twenty-one years. He was surprised that she could even sleep at all with all the horror she's been through. Losing a parent, getting abused by a lover, getting viciously attacked and disfigured by an animal… These were things that would drive most people to kill themselves, yet somehow, she was still here. Murphy couldn't help but be amazed by that.

However, at that point, Ellie's eyes slowly began to flutter open. Murphy was surprised that her first reaction upon seeing him was to jump backwards into the wall with a look of absolute terror in her eyes. Confused, Murphy figured the best move would be to get out of her bed.

"Sorry," he said as he sat up. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"Oh, shit," Ellie cursed, now having seemingly snapped back to reality. "No, stay. Sorry, I just freaked out for a second thinking you were someone else. Don't worry, it's not a problem; stay." She punctuated the "stay" by patting the spot next to her on the bed. Murphy hesitated a moment before relenting and lying back down. He was relieved to see that she didn't seem at all uncomfortable by his presence or the fact that the scars on her arm were clearly visible.

"Hi," he said as he came face to face with her.

"Hey," she said, a tiny grin appearing on her face for a brief second before falling. "Sorry for freaking out. I just thought…"

"It's okay," he assured. "I'm not mad or anything."

"That's good," Ellie said. "But still… For a second there I just thought… I just thought you were my ex-boyfriend and I panicked a little."

"Why?" Murphy asked.

"I… Uh…" She bit her lip and ran a hand through her tangled hair. "The… The night that he, you know, killed his parents, he forced me to sleep with him." A dark look must have come over Murphy's face because Ellie's eyes widened, and she scrambled to correct herself. "I don't mean that as in he raped me or something! He literally dragged me into the bedroom and made me lie down on the bed next to him while he slept with a loaded shotgun on his other side! He didn't harm me in that way at all! I wasn't expecting to see someone next to me when I woke up and I was worried for a second that I was reliving it over again. Sorry."

Murphy let the dark expression go as he released a relieved sigh.

"It's alright," he said. "It's not like you could help it."

"I know," Ellie admitted. "But it's still weird and embarrassing, so…"

"It shouldn't have happened, you know," Murphy said. "What that guy did to you, it shouldn't have happened."

"I know," Ellie said. "I knew he was a dangerous person. I tried everything I could to prevent him from hurting himself or someone else, it just wasn't enough."

"It never could've been," Murphy said. "You're only one person. If he was sick in the head enough to kill his family, there was nothing you could've done to stop him from doing it."

"Yeah," she said. "I just thought if I acted as sort of a lightning rod, he wouldn't turn his aggression towards himself or someone else. I thought I was helping him, but really all I was doing was making things worse."

"Did he hurt you before that night?" Murphy already knew the answer, he just needed to hear Ellie say it herself.

"Yeah," she reluctantly admitted. "Broke my jaw once. Had to go to the hospital to get it fixed. Also, he gave me a black eye another time, but that was the worst that he did before that night."

"Is he the one who cut up your arm?" Ellie appeared confused.

"What?" Murphy pointed at the arm he was referring to and it dawned on Ellie.

"Oh," Ellie said. "Sort of yes and no, mostly no, though."

"What do you mean?" Murphy asked.

"Well," Ellie said, pointing at the large, surgical-looking scar. "My ex is sort of indirectly at fault for this one. The night it happened he bent my arm all the way back to handcuff me and that did some damage. I had to have surgery to get it fixed. I don't have any problems using this arm, though. Sometimes it hurts a little when it rains, but that's about it."

"What about the other cuts?" Murphy asked.

"Oh," she said, sounding slightly relieved to be off the topic of her ex-boyfriend. "Those happened when I was a kid. I was walking home from school when the neighbor's dog got loose from their yard and attacked me. I rolled so I was able to protect my right side and my face well, but my left side took the brunt of it. I was able to kick the dog off me and get back to the house before it could attack me again. It was pretty scary."

"I'd say so," Murphy agreed.

"Yeah," Ellie said. "It hurt for the longest time. I remember when I went to school the next day the teacher practically flipped shit when she saw me and rushed me down to the nurse's office immediately."

"The next day," Murphy questioned. "Your adoptive mother made you go to school the next day?"

"No," Ellie said. "Because she wasn't my adoptive mother yet." Murphy still looked confused, so she got up and crawled to the end of the bed and retrieved something from the desk next to it. She then crawled back to the other side of the bed and showed it to him. It was a photo of a group of women dressed in hospital scrubs. "That's my mom; my birthmother." She pointed to a woman standing at the end of the back row with her blonde hair tied back into a bun. The smile on her face looked somewhat forced and her green eyes seemed heavy with weariness. "Her name was Lily. She was a nurse at Baystate Medical Center. She died in a car accident when I was nine."

"I'm sorry," Murphy said.

"It's alright," Ellie said. "It's been awhile, so it doesn't hurt as much. I'm not over it. I'll never be over it, but it's not as painful as it used to be."

"So, what happened after she died?" Ellie took a deep breath before continuing.

"After she died," she explained. "We had nowhere to go. Our grandparents and all our other relatives had also passed on at this point, and our dad wasn't in the picture at all. As a result, Sky and I became wards of the state." She paused for a second to take another stabilizing breath. "Things were okay for the first month or so. Well, I mean okay considering. We were still pretty upset about losing our mom, but we still had each other and that's all that mattered, right? Well, apparently the Commonwealth of Massachusetts didn't think so. Sky was sent to one foster home and I went to another, and let's just say that I didn't have such a good time there…" Murphy put a hand on her shoulder. Ellie's lips quirked upwards at the gesture for a moment. "It all came to an end after I was attacked by that dog. My teacher sent me to the nurse, the nurse called an ambulance, the ambulance took me to the hospital, the hospital called the police, and the police arrested the people who were fostering me for child neglect. At the same time, Lori and Charley had just adopted Sky and were considering finding and adopting her sister, and the rest is history."

Murphy gently ran his hand down her scarred arm before taking her hand and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.

"So, are you okay now?" he asked.

"No," Ellie said. "But that's my problem to deal with."

Murphy tried to come up with an argument to that but couldn't think of one that she probably wouldn't immediately shoot down. Instead, he chose to change the subject.

"What do you have written on the whiteboard?" he asked.

"Oh," she said. "That's nothing. Just a quote from a book I was reading. It's stupid…"

"What's the book about?" he asked.

"It's about a kid who grew up in Generation Y who goes to Europe, cheats on his girlfriend, returns to his small town whose economy is failing, and eventually ends up down and out in L.A." She shrugged. "It was an okay book. I don't know why though, but those few lines really struck me. I guess because it's kind of right. I mean, if you think about it, everyone can be distilled down to one tragic character flaw that will ultimately be their undoing. You, me, everyone! It's just… I don't know, real I guess?"

"Okay," Murphy said. "If that's true, then what's my 'one tragic character flaw?'" A smirk graced Ellie's lips.

"I'm not telling you." Murphy mirrored her smirk as he moved closer to her.

"Oh yeah?" he asked. "Why's that?"

"Because I think you already know it." The smirk changed into a smile that was not only wide but genuine. Murphy could see that she was pressing her tongue against her teeth.

"Really?" he said.

"Really," she echoed.

"Hmm," he said. "I don't think I do. Maybe you should enlighten me."

Murphy didn't know what he was doing. He didn't even know what happened. All he knew was that one second, he was lying dangerously close to Ellie on the bed, the next he was on the other side of the room with his heart attempting to jump out of his ribs and the most horrific scream he'd ever heard in his life piercing his eardrums. At first, he thought he might have scared Ellie, but she was still on the bed, her mouth pressed into a thin line and her eyes just as wide with shock and confusion as his were. He turned his attention towards the door and saw a rather heavy-set person with shaved green hair standing there, screaming their lungs out.

"What in the fuck is going on here," was the first intelligible thing come out of the person's mouth.

"Zara!" Ellie jumped off the bed and took a few steps towards the person. "You're back!"

"What in the fuck were you doing," the person continued to scream. "Why is there a man in **my** room?"

"Wait a sec, excuse me?" Ellie's eyes narrowed at the other person.

"This is my room!" The person began to wave their arms around wildly. " **My** room! Why is there a man in my room? Men are not allowed in my room! My room is sacred territory!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up!" Ellie pulled on a pink blouse that she had left discarded at the foot of the bed, but she never pulled her eyes away from the other person. "Last I checked, we **shared** this room, and if **you** can bring in whoever you like without any questions, then **I** should be able to, too!"

"Shut up!" The person then pointed at Murphy, who was just pulling himself to his feet to make an exit. "He shouldn't be here! I could have you expelled for this!" Ellie laughed.

"Oh, please!" She waved off the threat. "If anyone here should be expelled, it's you! Sexual harassment, exhibitionism, degrading Christian values at a **Catholic school** … My god, it's a wonder you haven't been expelled yet, and once the school finds out you were screaming like a banshee at ten in the morning…"

"Shut up!" Before Murphy knew it, both he and Ellie were having several miscellaneous objects thrown at them. Both managed to dodge for the most part and made it safely to the stairwell, where they sought refuge.

"I am so sorry about that," Ellie panted out. "I thought she went home for the holiday! I had no idea that she'd just decide to barge in like that! I'm really just sorry!"

"It's alright," Murphy managed to finally get out. He tried to breathe easy as the anxiety slowly left his body.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

 _No_ , was what Murphy wanted to say, but if he said that he'd have to get into all the dirty details as to why now, so he took one last deep, calming breath.

"I'm fine," he assured.

"You sure?" she asked.

"I'm sure." He affirmed.

"Okay," she said. They then stood there in silence for another few minutes.

"I guess I should probably get going," he said.

"I'll walk you out," Ellie offered.

"Thank you," Murphy said as they both started down the stairs.

"I should be saying that to you," Ellie said. "You didn't have to listen to any of that and you didn't have to stay with me the whole night, so just… Thank you."

"It's not a problem," Murphy said.

They went back out into the lobby and Ellie held open the front door for him. He turned to look back at her. She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded against her chest.

"So, I guess I'll see you around," Ellie said.

"Yeah," Murphy said. They stood there in silence for a few seconds, neither really wanting to say goodbye. "Listen, if you ever need to talk about anything, I'm just one call away." Ellie's lips quirked upwards again.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said. "Have a good Thanksgiving."

"You, too," Murphy said as he began to walk away.

"Bye," she said.

"Bye," Murphy called over his shoulder. Glancing back as he walked on, he saw that Ellie was standing at the door, continuing to watch him walk away. He couldn't help but smile at that.

* * *

 **Seriously, I'm not feeling great at the moment and I have places I need to be! Just remember to read and review and all that other happy shit. See you tomorrow!**

 **Remember kids, [insert witty comment here].**

* * *

 **Originally posted to FFN on 4/30/18.**


	9. Blue Light Special

**Happy May Day everyone! I have no idea what this holiday celebrates, but happy May Day anyway!**

* * *

 **Thursday, March 23rd, 2000**

Ellie hadn't slept a wink. The entire night, her eyes remained locked on Anthony, whose serene face came in stark contrast to his violent actions. After his surprise, he brought her up to his bedroom and told her they were going to go to sleep. Ellie didn't protest as she crawled into bed and Anthony crawled in next to her, careful to leave space for the loaded 20-gauge shotgun next to him.

She could feel her heart pounding hard against her ribs and the anxiety course through her veins. If she wasn't terrified that any sudden sound or movement would wake him up and lead to him killing her, then she would certainly be screaming at the top of her lungs and trembling something fierce. However, somehow, she managed to keep her composure through the night and most of the morning as she waited for Anthony to awaken from his slumber. Her one hope was that he wouldn't immediately decide to kill her upon waking.

Ellie did think about attempting an escape while he was a sleep, but quickly decided it was useless. Not only was the risk of him waking up too high, but there was also the issue of her damaged arm. It was very clear at this point that something in her arm had broken when Anthony pulled it behind her. She doubted she could move it without crying out. So, she decided that the best course of action was to stay put and hope to dear God that Anthony didn't decide on a whim to blow her brains out.

It was close to noon when Anthony finally showed signs of waking up. Ellie held her breath as she waited for the moment of truth; whether he would decide to end her life. She gulped as his eyelids fluttered open. His dark eyes stared at her as the world came into focus around him. Ellie schooled her expression into something other than complete and utter terror. Apparently, it must have worked, because a soft grin came upon his face.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning." Ellie tried to mirror his grin but found it quite difficult. Luckily, it was enough to fool Anthony. "How did you sleep?"

"Pretty good," he said. "You?"

"Like a rock," she lied. "So, what's on the agenda for today?" Anthony's face fell, but not into a look of anger. More like one of contemplation.

"We need to go," he stated.

"Go?" She could feel the anxiety boiling deep in the pit of her stomach. "Go where?"

"I don't know," Anthony said. "I was thinking somewhere sunny, where the police can't find us. Somewhere like Aruba or Jamaica maybe? I don't know." Ellie's face lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Jamaica sounds good!" The enthusiasm was practically dripping from her voice. "It's so beautiful this time of year! All the beaches and the sand and the ocean… We should go there!"

"Really?" He sounded somewhat surprised.

"Yeah, really." She desperately hoped he was buying her ruse.

"Alright, then." He stood up from the bed, dragging Ellie with him as she tried to minimize the amount of pain running down her arm. "Well, then, better not waste time. Let's get to the airport."

"Hold on a sec," Ellie said. "Don't we need to go home to get my passport?" Anthony's expression darkened.

"Your passport?" he questioned. "Why?"

"I can't leave the country without it." The air in the room was slowly becoming thinner and thinner with each passing second.

"Sure, you can," he said. "You went to Canada that one time and you didn't have a passport."

"Yeah," she said. "But I couldn't re-enter the U.S. because I didn't have my passport and I can never go to Canada again." Anthony ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Look, I'm not saying I don't want to go, I just want to make sure we have all the paperwork we need in order, so we **can** go." She forced that fake, soft grin back on her face. "Okay?"

"Alright," he said. "So where is this passport?"

"It's in the safe in Lori and Charley's bedroom." Anthony scoffed.

"God damn it, Ellie!" In his rage, he knocked something off his dresser and it shattered with a loud _smash_.

"No one should be there right now," Ellie assured him. "Charley had to take Sky to a track meet, Julie and Mabel are hanging out with different friends, and Lori should probably be out running errands at this point! I also can't think of any reason Tyler would have to come over, so we're pretty safe, I promise you."

"You swear on your life?" Ellie couldn't help but be unnerved by the grave tone of his voice.

"I swear on my life." Her heart beat painfully in her chest as she said what very well could be her famous last words.

"Alright," he said. "We better get going, then." Ellie nodded and followed closely behind him.

* * *

 **Tuesday, November 20th, 2001**

"Hey, dude, wake up!" Ellie was knocked sharply back into some form of awareness as Julie shook her shoulder. She looked around and found herself in the passenger's seat of her best friend/adoptive sister's Jeep Grand Cherokee. She let out a sigh of relief and leaned back so her head was pressed against the headrest. "Christ, you would think I was trying to wake the dead."

"I was up-all-night studying," Ellie offered as a way of explanation.

"Yeah," Julie said. "And were the night before that, too, and the night before that."

"Alright, I get the point." Ellie cut her off.

"Well, was it worth it?" Julie asked. "Did you pass the test?"

"I have no idea." Ellie attempted to rub the sleep out of her eyes. "I was so tired all of the questions blurred together into one. It'd be a miracle if I somehow managed to write my name down."

"Well, that's what you get for your unhealthy sleeping habits." Ellie playfully hit Julie on the arm.

"Shut up!" She then looked out the windshield and noticed they weren't where they were supposed to be. "Where are we? This isn't home."

"I know," Julie said. "I have to stop at Kmart to get a few things. You want to come in or are you going to wait here?"

"Eh." Ellie shrugged. "Might as well."

The two then climbed out of the car and as they walked towards the store, Julie retrieved a cart that was left abandoned in a nearby parking space.

"Wait," Ellie said as Julie retrieved the cart. "You said you were just going to get a few things. How many is a few?"

* * *

You have got to be kidding me," Ellie said for about the fiftieth time since they entered the store. Julie had added yet another bag of chips to her ever-growing stockpile of junk food.

"What?" Julie said. "It's not my fault that Tyler has an insatiable appetite."

"Yeah," Ellie said. "But that doesn't mean it's necessary to buy five of the same thing and hide it in different places around the house." Julie then tossed two more bags of Doritos into the cart.

"It is if you actually want to eat real food this Thanksgiving," Julie continued down the aisle with Ellie following closely behind. "You know it's Val's turn to cook this year."

"I know." Ellie then picked up a box of Twinkies and held it up to Julie's eye level. "But at the same time, I highly doubt this qualifies as real food either."

"Oh, come on," Julie complained. "Just because it's a little sugary doesn't mean it doesn't qualify as food."

"A little sugary?" Ellie flipped the box around to read the ingredients listed in the small blue text. "Let's just see about that. Ingredients include enriched bleached wheat flour – that certainly doesn't sound poisonous – water, sugar, corn syrup – sugar – high fructose corn syrup – sugar – partially hydrogenated vegetable and/or animal shortening – that sounds yummy – whole eggs, and dextrose – yet another sugar. It also contains less than two percent of several chemicals whose names I can only hope to pronounce and whose presence in your body would likely result in an untimely death."

"Okay, you've made your point." Ellie continued anyways.

"All the while Hostess promises it's commitment to quality." She then cleared her throat and in her best mocking tone said, "'At Hostess, we care **deeply** about our customers and are committed to providing you with **quality** bakery products. We **welcome** your comments and questions.'" Ellie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I have a question; is it possible for me to eat a Twinkie and not have to worry about developing diabetes from it later?" Julie then stopped in the middle of the aisle.

"You're an ass," she said.

"Yeah," Ellie agreed. "But you're my best friend so what does that say about you?"

"That I need to stop befriending members of my family." Ellie feigned shock.

"Harsh!" Julie laughed as she continued walking, turning the corner into the next aisle.

"Yeah, well, what can I say," Julie called over her shoulder as Ellie rushed to catch up. "Don't really have much good experience with being friends with my siblings."

"Not true," Ellie pointed out. "Sky's nice to you."

"Sky's nice to everyone," Julie said. "I swear to God the girl doesn't have a single mean bone in her body."

"You would say differently if you've stolen clothes from her closet." Ellie visibly shook. "Just thinking about it, I'm having war flashbacks."

"I'll consider myself lucky, then," Julie said.

"You better." Julie then pulled off to the side of the aisle and began comparing prices on two different brands of salsa.

"So, when's the wedding?" Ellie narrowed her eyes at Julie as she leaned against the shelf with arms crossed.

"What wedding?" Julie turned back to look at Ellie with a bemused expression on her face.

"Yours," she said. "And that hot Irish guy's."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." That made the fifty-first utterance of that phrase and the first time Ellie said it with a tiny smile.

"I'm serious!" Julie finally selected her choice in salsa, placing three jars of the chosen brand into the cart before continuing her way. "I saw him leaving your dorm this morning, so don't lie to me and tell me nothing happened! I want all of the dirty details!"

"There are no dirty details, Jules." Julie scoffed at that. "I'm serious, nothing happened!"

"Let me guess," Julie said as they reached the other end of the aisle. "You're about to say that you 'did not have sexual relations with that man,' am I right?"

"Yes," Ellie said. "Because I didn't."

"Oh, sure," Julie said. "I'll believe dinosaurs could fly sooner than I'll believe that."

"Pterodactyl," Ellie argued.

"I have no idea what that means," Julie said. "But I'll take that as an admission that I was right."

"It's a kind of dinosaur that could… You know what, I'm not going to argue about this with you right now." Ellie ran a hand through her hair. "You win! I fucked that guy even though I totally didn't. Are you happy now?"

"What's wrong?" Julie asked.

"Nothing." Ellie's tone didn't reflect her words.

"Come on, that's not nothing." Julie stopped and turned to face Ellie. "If something's wrong you can tell me, alright. Is he hurting you? Is that what this is about?"

"No," Ellie said. "I just want you to stay out of it."

"Alright," Julie relented. "But if something's wrong, you'd tell me right?"

"Of course," Ellie said.

"Good," Julie said. "Because I never want to see you like that again."

"Look, can we please just drop the topic?" Ellie raised her shoulders, practically shrinking in on herself. "No offense, but this isn't something I'd like to talk about in the middle of freaking Kmart."

"Alright," Julie said. "I'll lay off. Just chill. I didn't mean to upset you."

"No one does." Ellie's gaze turned towards the floor.

"I'm sorry," Julie said.

"It's alright," Ellie muttered. She then moved to walk ahead of Julie. "Let's just get the rest of this stuff and go."

"Okay," Julie agreed and followed behind her.

Things were silent between the two girls for the longest time. Julie continued to grab random food items off the shelf. With each moment that went by, the silence began to dig at Ellie more. Eventually, she found herself forced to give in.

"Alright," She finally said. "If I tell you one thing about Murphy, will you put all this extra food back." Julie turned to her and bit her lip, contemplating whether or not the information would be worth it.

"Deal," Julie finally said.

Ellie was quiet for a second to allow for a dramatic build-up before saying, "he wakes up for brief periods, like, ten times a night and he drools in his sleep."

"Ew!" Julie's face scrunched up in disgust. "I didn't want to know that!"

"Yeah, well, a deal's a deal!" Ellie picked up two 24-packs of Mountain Dew. "So you better get to putting all of this back, now."

"This is so unfair," Julie complained.

"So is life!" Ellie started walking back towards the soda aisle. "Come on! We don't have all day!"

Julie groaned as she began to stack the plastic-wrapped containers of Oreos back on the shelf.

* * *

"You did that on purpose!" Ellie pushed the door open with her right shoulder as she and Julie stepped into the house.

"No I did not," Julie shouted back. "How was I supposed to know that 128 was going to be backed up that bad!"

"Common fucking sense!" Ellie and Julie stepped into the kitchen from the foyer and set the bags down on the island. "It's two days before Thanksgiving! Every yahoo and his mother are getting on the highway and they all think that it's a matter of life and death to make it to their destination on time! Any idiot with two brain cells could tell you that it's probably a better idea to go with back roads instead of the Interstate."

"Oh really," Julie gawked. "You know how to get from Braintree to Newton using only backroads?"

"Give me a map," Ellie said. "I'd figure it out."

"Sure, you would." Julie started taking items out of the bags and putting them in their proper places in the cabinet. "Just like how you figured out how to get back to the lake the last time we camped out at Myles Standish."

"Hey, I got us there eventually," Ellie protested.

"Yeah," Julie said. "Four hours later after Val had already called the police."

"I still got us there," Ellie pointed out. "And we got to see some hot state police officers on horseback, so bonus!"

"Yeah, I wouldn't call that a bonus considering the ass-reaming Mom and Dad gave us when we got back." Ellie heard footsteps coming up the basement stairs and smirked.

"Remember," Ellie said, pulling out one of the stools to sit at the counter. "No matter how bad we got it, Val got it ten times worse."

"Ain't that the truth." As Julie said that, the footsteps turned the corner into the kitchen.

"Hey, guys." Tyler's voice was accompanied by the sound of his hand smacking against the doorframe as he walked in. "What's up?"

"Hey Ty," Julie greeted. "Not much, just putting groceries away."

"And I'm waiting for her to finish putting them away so that I can put them away properly." Ellie grinned for a second.

"That's cool." Tyler picked a random box up off the counter. "Ooo, Cheez-Its! My favorite! How did you know?"

"Give that back!" Julie ripped the package out of his hands. "These Cheez-Its are mine and Ellie's! Same goes for the rest of the stuff we bought! Get your own!"

"Oh really," Tyler smirked. "Then what's in that bag from Hilltop Steakhouse?"

"Tomorrow's dinner and a backup meal for Thanksgiving," Julie said. "Mom asked me to pick it up on the way."

"So, not all of this is yours and Ellie's…" Julie's palm connected with her face.

"God damn it, Tyler," she said. "Don't twist my words around!"

"Either all of it is yours and Ellie's or none of it is," Tyler smirked. "Which is it?"

"The latter," Julie reluctantly admitted.

"Great!" Tyler picked up the box of Cheez-Its and raced off towards the living room. "Thanks!"

"Hey!" Julie took off after him, catching up with him in the foyer, grabbing the box, and starting a game of tug-of-war. "Give that back!"

"Nope, sorry it's mine now!" Tyler grinned as Julie tried to pry the box from his grip.

"You horse's ass!" Julie shouted. "Let go!"

"You're going to have to make me!" Tyler shouted back.

"I swear to God when I tell Mom about this…"

As if on cue a set of headlights pulled up into the driveway. Ellie put on her best innocent face as her two older siblings were unaware of their mother's impending approach. She was not disappointed as Lori walked through the door with an astonished look on her face. Mabel followed closely behind her with the same kind of smirk that younger siblings had when they knew their older siblings were about to get in trouble.

"Tyler Joseph! Juliette Monroe! What in God's name are you doing?" Julie immediately lets go of the Cheez-Its box and stumbled back onto her rear end. Tyler laughed and waved the box up at her tauntingly. Julie ignored him and scrambled to her feet.

"Hi, Mom," she said. "I didn't see you pull up."

"Obviously," Lori said. "Now what were you two doing?"

"Tyler tried to steal my Cheez-Its!" Julie pointed an accusing finger at her brother.

"Did not," Tyler exclaimed.

"Did so," Julie insisted.

"Children!" Lori pinched the bridge of her nose as she walked over to the island counter. "That's all I raised, grown-up children!"

"Mom, she bought those groceries for everyone," Tyler tried to defend. Julie crossed into the kitchen, coming up next to her mother.

"Mom, I swear to God those snacks are supposed to be for me and Ellie," Julie said. "No one else."

"Did you buy what I asked for at Hilltop?" Lori inquired.

"Yes," Julie said. "Four steaks and two packs of turkey burgers."

"Tyler, give your sister back her food!" Julie pumped her fist in a celebratory fashion. Tyler rolled his eyes and gave the box back to his sister, who immediately put it away with the rest of the food she and Ellie bought at Kmart.

Tyler went downstairs – stating that he was going to be playing Halo if anyone needed him – and Mabel headed off to the bathroom – stating that she needed to wash the smell of cheerleading practice off her. Lori informed them both that dinner would be ready in an hour. Julie finished unloading their Kmart haul and went into hers and Mabel's room to unpack her bags.

Ellie, meanwhile, immediately took to the task of completely rearranging the cabinets in a way that pleased her. Lori did a good job of keeping things in the order she liked while she was away, but Julie had just messed it all up by placing the groceries any place without any care. As Ellie stood on her tiptoes to get a package of Oreos off the top shelf, Lori spoke up.

"So, how did your test go?" Lori kept her gaze on the stack of mail in her hands, sorting out the personal letters, the bills, and the junk.

"Pretty good, I guess." Ellie didn't look up from what she was doing either; continuing to keep her focus on fixing the mess Julie had made. "I mean, I feel like I practically slept through the test, but I also feel like I got most everything right, so…"

"That's good," Lori commented. Ellie gave a nod and a hum of acknowledgment in response.

"So what time does Sky's flight arrive?" Ellie asked.

"What?" Lori put the letters down and turned her attention back to Ellie.

"I said, 'what time does Sky's flight arrive?'" Ellie turned around, not getting that Lori wasn't asking for clarification. "I mean, I need to know if I'm going to be picking her up from the airport."

"Oh, she didn't tell you?" Ellie furrowed her brow at the surprised look on Lori's face.

"Tell me what?" She rested her hands on the cool faux marble of the countertop.

"Ellie, Sky's not coming for Thanksgiving." It took a moment for the statement to fully sink in.

"What do you mean she's not coming?" Ellie's face was stricken with confusion. "Could she not come up with her half of the plane ticket? Is she scared to fly because of the hijackings? I can drive down to Pennsylvania and get her, it's no problem!"

"No, no," Lori assured her. "It's not that. She can't get Black Friday off because if she does take Black Friday off, she can't take the week of Christmas off and she'd rather miss Thanksgiving than Christmas."

"Really?" Ellie groaned. "They're going to make her work on Black Friday? Why can't she just skip it?"

"Because then she'll get fired," Lori said.

"Her birthday's on Saturday," Ellie said. "Will she at least be back for that?"

"No," Lori said

"Why not?" Ellie sounded like a petulant child who had just been refused a toy.

"She'd have to fly up first thing on Saturday morning, and then leave a few hours later to be well-rested for class on Monday." Lori was clearly becoming irritated. "I'm sorry, but that'd just be a waste of money." Ellie let out another audible groan. "Don't be like that, you'll see her at Christmas."

"If I'm still alive on Christmas," Ellie muttered under her breath.

"What was that?" Ellie internally cursed Lori's impeccable sense of hearing.

"Nothing," Ellie lied.

"You better knock that attitude off young lady," Lori said. "Otherwise you're going to have to go hungry on Thanksgiving." Lori quickly realized the problem with her threat. "No, wait, you'll have to eat everything Val makes this Thanksgiving. I mean, **everything**. Even the corn she somehow manages to burn every single time." Ellie shuddered at the thought and wiped the annoyed look off her face.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," she said with sincere remorse.

"You better be." Lori then walked over to one of the cabinets and pulled out a box of spaghetti. "Now get out of the way. I need to get started on dinner." Ellie nodded and retreated to her room, stopping only to get her bags to bring them into her room.

Once she was in her room, Ellie shut the door behind her and sat down on the bed. She stared at the other side of the room – Sky's side. The entire room was painted pink as it was Sky's favorite color at the time she came to live at Lori's. Ellie would have chosen something darker, but it made her little sister happy, so she dealt with it. Sky's side was neat, organized, and had a theme of calming pastel colors. She had many pictures of family and friends up on the wall, but one stuck out to Ellie. It was a photo of herself, Sky, and their mother took the Easter before their mother's death. Their mother was sitting in the booth of a restaurant the two girls had loved as children. Ellie was standing up in the booth, her arms wrapped around their mother's neck, while Sky sat on the other side with her arms wrapped around their mother's waist. All of them were smiling. Tears sprung to Ellie's eyes.

This was going to be the first holiday in eleven years that she and Sky didn't spend together. Seeing Sky had been the one thing she had been looking forward to; the one thing that would have kept her already splintered sanity from cracking completely. Now, she had to lie through her teeth during a family meal; pretending to be happy even though she wanted to do nothing more than crawl into a hole and die.

Ellie fell back against her bed, pulled out her cell phone, and stared at it intently. She thought about calling Murphy again for a second but quickly dismissed the notion. She had bothered him enough for one lifetime. He didn't need to be bothered with her ever again, no matter how at ease she felt around him.

No one needed to be bothered with her ever again. She was a monster and she needed to eliminate herself before more people's lives were destroyed; just like Anthony's.

* * *

 **Just as a reminder, although I'm posting every day this week, this fic is only getting updated on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. What do I have planned for tomorrow and Friday? Well, I guess you'll have to find out!**

 **Remember kids, don't eat Twinkies. I swear to God, they're trying to poison you with those ingredients.**

* * *

 **Originally posted to FFN on 5/1/18.**


	10. Smiling Through My Teeth

**So, I just had the worst panic attack in my life. Let's celebrate with a new chapter!**

* * *

 **Thursday, March 23rd, 2000**

Ellie's hands were practically shaking as she desperately tried to get the key into the lock. Anthony stood behind her, keeping the pistol, he had brandished the previous day level with her kidneys. He had been nice enough to unlock the handcuffs keeping them bound together, however he still didn't trust her enough not to run off, so he made her aware of the fact that he would be standing behind her with the loaded gun the entire time, warning that if she made one false move, he would guarantee she would die slowly and agonizingly. She was more than aware of it now. She could practically feel Anthony's frustrated gaze on the back of her head as she fumbled with the key. It only added to her nerves and made the task of unlocking the front door that much harder.

Eventually – much to Ellie's relief – she eventually managed to get the stupid key into the lock and turned it so that way the deadbolt came open. Lori never locked the actual door itself, just the deadbolt. Ellie had never really understood why, but she was immensely thankful for it. If she had to fumble around with another key, she was certain that Anthony would lose it and she'd be a dead woman.

Stepping inside, Ellie felt some sort of blackening feeling come over her. Everything looked the same. This was the same place that she and Sky had spent the past nine years growing up in. A place she had come to think of as home. A place where she felt safe. Now, though, she knew that she wasn't safe. She was in a safe place, but she wasn't safe. There was a mad man behind her who would put a bullet in her brain if she so much as laughed at the wrong thing. For the first time since she'd moved into this house, she didn't feel safe.

That absolutely terrified her.

"Alright," Anthony said. "Now where's this stupid safe?"

"In Lori and Charley's room," Ellie said clearly and concisely. Even though she wanted nothing more than to break down sobbing, but she knew that if she didn't stay calm and do and say what Anthony wanted her to, that would be it for her.

"Well, lead the way." Anthony jabbed the gun into her back, causing Ellie to start moving. She led him through the kitchen, dining room, and down the hall into Lori and Charley's bedroom. Their bedroom was located at the end of the hall and on her way, there she quickly glanced into both Julie and Mabel's and hers and Sky's rooms. The doors were open, and Ellie was thankful to see that none of her sisters were home. She cast that fear from her mind as she pushed open the door to the master bedroom. Upon entering, the family cat regarded them with wary eyes before hopping down from where she was perched on the bed and walking slowly and softly with an air of grace as she exited the room she had been trapped in for at least the past couple of hours.

 _Lucky,_ Ellie thought. _I wish I could walk away like that._

Anthony jabbed the gun into her back again and Ellie took this as a cue to keep going. Walking over to the closet, Ellie pulled the door open and knelt on the floor. Pushing aside the many shoes that littered the closet floor, she was face-to-face with the black, heavy, fire-proof and flood-proof safe. Having had stolen some of the bourbons that Charley kept in the safe previously, Ellie knew what the passcode was (39-98-00; the sum of hers, Tyler's, Julie's, Mabel's, and Sky's birthdays added together) and spun the tumblers until it successfully unlocked. Opening it up, Ellie quickly spotted the navy-blue cover of the piece of documentation, snatched it up, got to her feet, and handed it to Anthony. He quickly flipped it open and came face-to-face with the image of her eighteen-year-old-self.

"Wow," he remarked. "Could you be any more of a slut? I mean look at you." He flipped the passport around to show a black-and-white photo of Ellie wearing a dark-colored sweater and light make up. Her hair was pinned back to the silver earrings she was wearing were visible. "You're made up like a tramp! It's like you're spreading your legs wide and inviting every passerby on the street to have a go! You're disgusting!"

Ellie wrenched her eyes shut and remained silent. She waited patiently for him to put a bullet in her brain, but that never happened. Instead, Anthony slammed the passport into her chest so hard that she stumbled backward a step. Taking the passport from him, Ellie finally felt safe to open her eyes and was greeted by the older man's deep, intense, dark gaze. If looks could kill…

"C'mon," he said. "You've got your damn passport, now let's go." Ellie swallowed hard and nodded weakly, leading the way as he pressed the gun to her back. She almost felt like smiling at the fact that he didn't notice that she didn't reset the safe back to the state it was before they disturbed it, but she knew she'd be in a world of hell if she did. Leaving behind one small hint of what had happened to her gave her some sense of satisfaction. Once Lori came home, she would notice that the safe had been broken into and notice that the only thing taken was the passport. Hopefully, that would give the police a lead as to where they were going and that would lead to security at the airports being on high-alert. They'd be looking for a suspicious looking man with a clearly distressed woman attempting to leave the country. That was if Lori even noticed the safe had been broken into at all.

Also, that depended on Lori not walking into the house just as Ellie and Anthony were stepping into the kitchen. However, life rarely goes the way you want.

Ellie watched Lori struggle to push the door open with six bags in each of her hands and Ellie's heart completely sank. She had no idea Lori would be home this early. She began mentally kicking herself for risking the lives of her loved ones in such a foolish fashion. Anthony put his hand on Ellie's shoulder and pressed the gun a little harder into her back.

"Walk." He gave her a forceful push as he guided her through the kitchen. Ellie gulped and hoped to dear God Lori wouldn't notice that anything was amiss. However, that was just a delusional fantasy. As soon as Lori looked up at them, her eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, sure, I don't need any help, thank you." The older woman slammed the door shut with her foot. She carried the exceptionally heavy bags over to the counter and set them down with a gasp of relief. "Oh boy, that was heavy." She then turned her attention back to Anthony and Ellie. "Where have you been? You didn't come home last night! I was going to call the police if you still weren't here when I got back! You better have a good explanation, young lady!" Ellie could feel her heartbeat stutter as she tried to come up with something, anything that she could say that would get her out of the situation.

"Well, Lori…" By the grace of God she was able to keep her tone even and measured as she tried to explain in the calmest way possible. "Um, Anthony and I are going to Jamaica." Lori's expression went from aggravated to furious.

"Jamaica!" Lori exclaimed. "What the hell are you going to Jamaica for?"

"We just want to…" Ellie was cut off by Anthony.

"It was my idea, Mrs. Maynard," he explained. "Ellie and I are moving to Jamaica and we're getting married." Ellie tried as best she could to keep the mortified expression off her face.

"Married?" Lori gasped out in shock. "What the… Why the… What about school? Jesus, Ellie, have you thought about this at all?"

"It doesn't matter, Lori." Internally, Ellie was willing herself to have a heart attack and die so that way she wouldn't have to see what happened next.

"It doesn't matter?" Lori gawked. "Ellie, these are important life decisions! You can't just make these choices willy-nilly! What has gotten into you? What were you thinking? Married? You can't just decide to get married overnight!"

"Lori…" Ellie tried to mentally prepare herself for the reproductions of what she was about to do. She knew it was impossible, but she had to try anyway. "It's okay. Really, it's fine. Just don't **put a gun to my back**."

The room fell so silently that one could hear a pin drop. Lori's eyes widened as she took in how Anthony had positioned himself behind Ellie. Ellie could only imagine what Anthony's expression was like, but he hadn't pulled the trigger yet, so she took that as a good sign. Lori fixed her gaze on Ellie's eyes and made a "come here" motion with her hands.

"Ellie…" Lori's voice was quaking with nervousness. "Why don't you come over here?"

"I can't." Ellie couldn't resist the tears building up in her eyes.

"I really think you should." Lori reached out a hand towards her. Ellie couldn't suppress the sobs building up inside and began full on crying.

"I can't, I-" Ellie was cut off by Anthony's arm coming around her neck and putting her into a chokehold. He moved the gun from being pressed against her back to being pressed against her right temple.

"She's telling the truth." Anthony began dragging her back over to the front door. She tried to punch, scratch, and kick her way out of his grip, but he held strong. "She really can't go over there."

"Anthony, just let her go!" Lori begged though she seemed too shocked to move otherwise.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mrs. Maynard." He removed the gun from Ellie's temple briefly to pull open the front door. Ellie tried with all of her might to fight back, but it was proving futile. "After all, we have a plane to catch."

Ellie has then dragged out the front door, the entire time kicking and screaming obscenities at Anthony. If it were a nicer day out, she likely would have alerted the neighbors and someone would have come running, but it was continuing to rain just as it had the day before and everyone was inside their houses, oblivious to the crime happening just next door.

Anthony brought her to the passenger side of the truck and unceremoniously shoved her through the door. Ellie scrambled to get past him and get out, but he slammed the door in her face. She once again tried to get past him as he climbed in on the driver's side, but he shoved her injured shoulder hard sending her flying to the floor of the vehicle and causing her a great amount of pain. By the time Ellie had pulled herself back into the seat, Anthony had already started the truck and was backing out of the driveway.

Looking out the window, Ellie saw that Lori had snapped out of whatever form of shock she had fallen into and was now chasing the vehicle as it pulled out onto the street. Ellie pressed her hands and face to the glass, sobbing and screaming for her adoptive mother to come and save her. However, that wasn't what ended up happening. Anthony gunned it up the street and Lori was left chasing the dust in their wake. Ellie felt all hope leave her body right then and there.

"Get away from the window." When Ellie ignored Anthony's command, he smashed the gun – which was still held firmly in his right hand – against the window, causing a small crack to form and Ellie to jump. "God damn it, get away from the fucking window!"

Ellie turned around in her seat, careful not to make any sudden movements. She gripped the edge of her seat tightly and tried to calm herself down. She knew she was going to be killed, but she knew that continuing to sob like an idiot would only get her killed faster. The only thing she could do now bought herself more time.

"You're going to regret doing that," Anthony spat out viciously.

 _I already do._

* * *

 **Thursday, November 22nd, 2001**

Ellie was abruptly pulled from her sleep by the sharp sting of some unknown object smacking her in the face. Bolting upright, she prepared herself for an attack but was (thankfully) pleasantly surprised by the sight of Mabel rolling her eyes at her. Looking down, she saw that the object she had smacked with was an outdated issue of _People Magazine_ featuring Brad Pitt on the cover, proclaiming him to be the sexiest man alive. Ellie placed a hand on her chest and let out a sigh of relief.

"Jesus Christ, Mabel, you scared the shit out of me!" Technically that wasn't entirely true. The demons that haunted her every time she fell asleep had terrified her more than Mabel ever could but getting smacked in the face with 100 sheets of gloss text paper didn't help matters either.

"Val says dinner's ready," Mabel said while simultaneously flipping Ellie off. Ellie sent the gesture right back at her. Mabel once again rolled her eyes and walked out the door.

Getting up off the couch, Ellie straightened out her clothes and glanced at the digital clock on the VCR. It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, meaning only thirty minutes had passed since Ellie had snuck off to the living room to watch whatever inane kids film Val had put on for her two oldest kids. She wasn't exactly following it. She just knew that a bunch of apes adopted a little human boy, Phil Collins was playing in the background, and for the life of her, she couldn't keep her eyes open.

Ellie hadn't slept at all since she had been home. She knew she'd have nightmares if she did, so she kept fighting off sleep. It wasn't the healthiest choice, but it was the only option she had seeing as she just couldn't just call up Murphy and beg him to drive all the way out to Newton, so she could get a few hours of sleep. The night he slept over in her dorm was the first night in almost two years where she didn't have any nightmares at all. Although, yes, she found that incredibly strange, it also felt like a relief in some way; just knowing that a solution to her problem – no matter how ridiculous it sounded – was out there gave her just the tiniest spark of hope. Only a tiny one, though. She knew she was insane to think that this would be any kind of a permanent solution. Yes, Murphy made it abundantly clear that he was interested in her, Ellie knew that wasn't going to last long. As soon as he found out the truth about her, he would be heading for the hills. Everyone would be, Ellie just knew it.

Trying to push those thoughts out of her mind, Ellie joined the rest of her family, who had gathered around the dining room table. Charley was sitting at the head of the table with Lori to his right and an empty seat for Val on his left. Next to Val's seat was a high chair for her infant son, Jimmy, and next to him sat her older two kids, Harry (who was five) and Kristina (who was seven, going on eight). On the other side of the table, next to Lori was Mabel, then two empty seats, then Julie. Ellie took the seat next to Julie, leaving the last chair for Tyler to take. Well, technically there was another chair at the other end of the table but sitting there would only make things seem uneven to her. As Ellie slid into her chair, Val walked in with a platter covered with a silver dome that shrouded la pièce de résistance, a grin of satisfaction clear on her face.

"Alright, everyone!" She set the platter down in the center of the table with one hand on the handle for the metal dome ready to rip the cover off and display her masterpiece to the world. "I hope everyone's hungry because – not to brag or anything, but I think this might be my best recipe yet."

"Val, don't you think you want to hold off on that?" The tone of Lori's voice made it clear that she was just trying to put off eating whatever creation her sister had made this year. "After all, Tyler hasn't come back from his friend's house yet."

"You know how Tyler is," Val said, waving off her sister's comment. "He probably forgot that dinner was supposed to be at two. He might not be back for hours. In the meantime, this food is just going to get cold. We might as well start without him." Lori grumbled something about not telling her about her own kid, but Val remained oblivious to it. Just as she was about to pull the cover off her work of art, Mabel spoke up, interrupting the magnificent reveal.

"Ty's truck is pulling up." Lori immediately got up to get a better angle on the driveway. Sure enough, she saw the tail end of Tyler's white Silverado coming to a stop in front of the garage.

"It is him," Lori said, adding a "thank goodness" under her breath.

Moments later Tyler could be heard entering the house. However, the clacking of high-heels on the hardwood floor made it clear that he wasn't alone. Turning to look behind her, Ellie saw Tyler enter the dining room with a strange woman at his side. She was pretty, with short blonde-ish brown hair held back with a hairband and a huge pair of hazel-colored eyes. Her naturally tan skin stood out in contrast to the cream-colored long-sleeved dress she was wearing. She wore a pleasant smile as she followed Tyler closely.

"Hey guys," Tyler said. "Look, I'm sorry to spring this on you last minute, but I bought a surprise guest for dinner." He gestured to the woman next to him. "This is Nicole. We've kind of been dating for a few months now."

"Kind of?" Nicole's smile never faltered, indicating that she wasn't upset by his comment.

"Well, uh, yeah…" Ellie was stunned. She had never seen Tyler looking so sheepish in his entire life. She exchanged a look with Julie who looked equally as surprised, but just decided to shrug it off.

"It's nice to meet you all," Nicole greeted the table.

"It's nice to meet you too, dear," Lori said to Nicole before turning to look down the table at the two girls sitting on the end. "Ellie, Julie, scooch over one so Tyler and Nicole can sit down." The girls quickly moved so that Julie was sitting at the other end of the table, and Ellie was sitting to her left. Tyler took the seat to the left of Ellie and Nicole sat to the left of him, with Mabel to her left. Tyler went clockwise around the table giving everyone's names to Nicole and everyone said "hi" and "nice to meet you."

"Alright, now that everybody's here…" Anticipation was building in Val's voice as she once again put her hand on the lid covering the platter.

"Wait!" Lori practically slammed her hand on the lid of the platter. "We can't start eating! We haven't… Prayed yet!"

"Prayed?" Val questioned.

"Yes," Lori said. "We haven't prayed yet. Isn't that the proper way to start off a Thanksgiving meal?"

"I thought only Catholics prayed before meals," Mabel pointed out. "We're Episcopal."

"It's only proper form." Lori tried as best she could to sell this excuse, but Val wasn't buying it.

"You're just putting off eating my meal." Lori hesitantly laughed the notion off.

"I'm not putting anything off…" she lied. "I just… Think we should thank our Lord and savior for this meal. That's all." Val glared at Lori but sat back down in her seat. Around the table, everyone took hands.

"So how should we go about this?" Lori asked the group.

"I'll say the prayer," Ellie offered.

"Why you?" Mabel questioned.

"Because I'm the only one here who's actually Catholic." Ellie gestured with her head over to the photos lining the wall. "I mean, my baptism photos were taken in a Catholic church, so I must be Catholic, right? Plus, I'm going to a Catholic school…"

"Didn't your mom take you to a Methodist church when you were little?" Julie questioned. "And weren't you also Scientologist, an Atheist, and a Satanist at certain points?"

"Hey, the Scientologist and Satanist things were against my will," Ellie said. "And the Atheism was just a phase. I'm Catholic now, shut up!"

"Well, I guess if no one else wants to do it, go ahead Ellie." Everyone shut their eyes and bowed their heads once Lori gave the go-ahead. Things were silent for a minute before Ellie spoke up.

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America…" Everyone let out groans and curses and Ellie broke out laughing.

"Eleanor Lilith Braden, that was not funny!" Lori seemed more enraged than she should have been given that she only wanted to pray to avoid having to start dinner.

"Yeah, _Christmas Vacation_ did it first. At least have some originality." Lori turned her dark glare on her son.

"Tyler Joseph," she snapped.

"You know what, enough of this foolishness," Charley proclaimed. "Let's just eat." Everyone grumbled in agreement and Val sprung to her feet.

"As I was saying before," she said. "I think I really outdid myself this year. So, you know how ovens usually cook stuff from the outside in?"

"I don't think I like where this is going," Lori said.

"Well, I thought 'why not do something different?'" The pride in Val's voice was swelling with each word. "'Why don't I try cooking it from the inside out?'"

"So, what," Lori said. "You stuck it in the microwave?" Val looked confused.

"Why would I do that?" she asked. "I said I wanted to cook it from the **inside out** , not the **outside in**." It was Lori's turn to look confused. "No, what I did was much better." Val then pulled the cover off the platter with an exclamation of "viola!" A completely raw turkey with a black substance pouring out of its rear cavity was presented to the table.

"What on Earth…" Lori began to say, but Val instantly cut her off in her excitement.

"I know, isn't it great!" Val was practically jumping up and down. "I took charcoal from the barbeque and lit it while it was still in the turkey! I left it like that for a couple of hours and once it went out I just put it on a platter and served it up! That's it! No cheap gimmicks, no freaky sauces! Just good old-fashioned roasted turkey! So, what do you think? I did great, right?"

"Val…" Lori tried to keep her tone calm and even as not to upset her sister. "I don't think it cooked all the way through…"

"Non-sense!" Val dismissed. "I left it out on the porch like that for two hours! There's no way it could be undercooked!"

"I'm afraid she's right, Val," Charley interjected. "There's no way charcoal would be able to cook that thing from the inside out. I mean look at it!" He picked up his knife and tapped it against the raw bird. It sounded like metal scraping against ice. "It's still frozen."

"Shit," Val muttered. "Well, is it still edible?"

"Only if you want to contract Salmonella," Ellie remarked.

"I'll try some," Tyler offered.

"Oh no you don't," Lori said. "We are not having a repeat of the mayonnaise turkey incident!"

"Mayonnaise turkey incident?" Nicole questioned with a bemused smile.

"It's a long story…" Tyler returned her smile and Nicole let out a little giggle.

"Alright, I'm officially calling this dinner a lost cause." Charley stood up from his place at the table and Lori quickly followed suit.

"I'll start the backup dinner," Lori sighed as she got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

"I guess I better throw this out…" Val then picked up the platter by the handles, a sorrowful expression on her face.

"Hey, Ty, do you know who's playing right now?" Charley asked.

"The Army-Navy game should be on by now," Tyler said. "There's also the Iron Bowl…"

"Sounds good to me," Charley said. "Let me just get a beer from the fridge downstairs."

"I can do it!" Ellie thought her offer came off as a little too eager, but nobody really noticed.

"Nah, that's okay," Charley said. "I can get it myself."

"It's no problem," Ellie said. "Please, I insist."

"Alright," Charley relented.

"I'll have one, too," Tyler said.

"Two beers," Ellie confirmed. "Got it." She then got up and walked to the stairs that led to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a refrigerator filled with beer and extra bottles of Gatorade and soda. Upon opening the fridge, Ellie immediately ripped open one of the bottles of beer and drank it down as fast as she could.

As much as she loved her family, she had trouble trying to ignore that dream. She could laugh and joke all she wanted, but at the end of the day, those nightmares were still there. Everything that happened to her still happened to her and she still did the things she did. Nothing in the world could do anything to erase that pain. Well, nothing except for a nice, cold Sam Adams, but that was only a temporary fix. When she sobered up, she'd feel the pain anew and it would once again be unbearable.

Suicide was starting to look appealing again.

Tossing the empty bottle in the trash, Ellie went upstairs, bringing three bottles of beer with her – one for Charley, one for Tyler, and one for herself. She joined the men in the living room to watch at least thirty different football games. She didn't know who was playing who (Truth be told, she didn't usually pay attention to football unless the Pats were playing.) but she cheered and groaned at the appropriate times. Mostly, though, she ended up making polite conversation with Nicole, and Julie when she joined them after they had eaten the backup dinner. After having to explain their complex family tree to her (it seemed that Tyler neglected to tell his girlfriend that Ellie and Sky were adopted and therefore, not his actual sisters) she learned a few things about the older woman. She was born in California and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, she had a younger half-sister who coincidentally was named Val, too (however, her sister's name was short for Valencia, not Valerie, so that made it easy to differentiate the two), and her dad was – for lack of a better term – a gambler and a scam artist.

"He's not a bad person," Nicole assured. "He may have done a few things that hurt me and Valencia when he and my step-mom were getting divorced, but he's always at least tried to do his best by us. His heart's in the right place, he's just a little misguided in the way he does things."

"Misguided?" Ellie giggled.

"Alright, maybe it's a little more than 'misguided,'" Nicole admitted. "More like a criminal, but he'd never intentionally hurt me or Valencia. He'd take a bullet for us if he had to."

"Well, that's good to know I guess." Ellie picked up her bottle and took the last sip. She pouted at the sudden absence of liquor. "All gone… Sad…"

"I can get you another one if you want," Nicole offered.

"Nah…" Ellie waved her off. "It's probably best I get cut off now before I get too drunk. …That girl in the video cabinet is purdy…"

"…That's your reflection in the glass." Nicole was hesitant as she wasn't sure if Ellie was joking or she was that drunk. Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter.

"Oh," Ellie said. "She's still purdy, though, for an ugly bitch…" Nicole let out a bit of an uncomfortable laugh. "So, how did you and Tyler meet?"

"Oh, that story," Nicole laughed, this time more genuinely. "It's not really much to tell."

"Come on," Ellie said. "I want to hear it!"

"Alright," Nicole relented. "The place that I work at was getting remodeled and I happened to notice that one of the construction guys was pretty good looking…"

"You mean sexy beyond all hell." Ellie hadn't realized that Tyler had been listening in on their conversation, but she still laughed anyway.

"That too," Nicole smirked. "And I just asked him out."

"Really, you asked Tyler out?" It might've been the fact that she was slightly drunk, but once she started laughing, Ellie couldn't stop.

"Yeah," Nicole said. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," Ellie said, trying to calm her laughter down. "It's just that with all the bragging he did in high school, good ol' ladies' man Ty would've asked you out."

"Yeah, yeah," Tyler said as he reached for his drink. "Laugh it up, fuzzball."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Ellie finally managed to get her laughing under control. "That's not funny, I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Nicole assured. "So, what about you? Are you seeing anyone?"

"Uh…" Ellie was at a loss for words. "Not really. Probably for the best. I haven't had much luck in the game of love."

"Don't say that," Nicole dismissed. "I'm sure there's someone out there for you."

"Doubtful," Ellie remarked. "My last boyfriend killed his parents and I… I…" Suddenly Ellie became aware of what she was saying and who she was saying it to. "I'm going to go to my room."

The next thing anyone knew, Ellie had bolted out the front door, taking the keys to Julie's Jeep with her. She knew it was an ill-advised idea, given the fact that she had been drinking, but she still started the car and began to pull out of the driveway.

 _I can't do this,_ she thought to herself. _I can't do this. I need to end this all before I burst!_

* * *

Murphy and Connor had been spending their Thanksgiving Day drinking and watching re-runs of old movies on TV. They were about a quarter of the way through _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_ when their phone rang. Connor was the one closest to it, so he answered it.

"Hello?" It took less than two seconds for his eyes to go wide and his face to blanch Murphy gave Connor a confused look. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on there, calm down."

"Who is it?" Connor held up his index finger to his brother and tried to focus on what the caller was saying.

"Yeah, Murph's right here," Connor said. "Do you want to talk to him?" The caller must have said yes because the next thing that Connor said was "hold on, I'll give it to him" before passing Murphy the phone.

"Hello," Murphy said.

"Hey…" Murphy instantly recognized the sobbing voice as Ellie's. "S-sorry to call, I just…"

"Jesus Christ," Murphy said when she trailed off. "What happened?" Ellie didn't elaborate. She, instead, just kept crying. "Where are you?"

"My dorm," she replied.

"Do you want me to come and get you?"

"Yes." The sobs came harder as she shouted out that one word.

"Alright," Murphy said. "Just stay there and don't do anything stupid."

"I won't," she promised before hanging up. Murphy got up and retrieved his black pea-coat from the back of a chair.

"You okay to drive?" Connor asked.

"No," Murphy said. "I'll take the bus."

"You sure about this?" Connor asked.

"You heard her," Murphy said. "She was crying like the whole world was coming down on her. No way I'm just going to leave her like that."

"Alright." Connor nodded. "Just stay safe."

"I will." Murphy headed out the door. "See you later."

* * *

 **If you're wondering what the panic attack was about, I just posted that Avengers fic I've been talking about and I am so worried that I am going to get hate for it that I am seriously becoming physically sick from it. I'm supposed to be on pills to keep that from happening, but apparently, it's not working. Anyway, if you want to check it out it's on my profile titled _My Head's Above the Rain and Roses_ , so feel free to check it out. Just be aware that it contains a pairing that not everyone is going to agree with.**

 **Remember kids, just don't try to cook a whole turkey from the inside out. Even if you use a microwave, it's not gonna work.**

* * *

 **This chapter was originally posted to FFN on 5/3/18.**


	11. Thou Shalt Not Kill

**Happy Cinco de Mayo! ...Yeah, I know I'm cutting it close here.**

* * *

 **Thursday, November 22nd, 2001**

"Holy fuck what happened to your hair?" was the first thing Murphy said after he walked to Ellie's dorm room (paying off Oswin twenty bucks to let him in) to find her curled up in a ball in the corner with scissors clutched in her hand and bits of her hair strewn around her. She barely looked up from where her face was buried behind her knees.

"I got bored waiting," she explained. "We're probably lucky that my hair was the only thing I cut." Murphy rushed over to and got down on his knees beside her.

"What the hell?" Murphy said as he gently reached out to touch her face. Ellie shifted away from his hands. "What happened? Why are you so upset?"

"I..." She tried to catch her breath, so the words would come out evenly, but she failed to do so. "I was having dinner with my family and… This is so stupid, but I was having trouble dealing with it all – pretending everything was okay and I wasn't a spawn of Satan set upon the Earth to wreak havoc and destruction – so, I started drinking. I drank a lot. I think I lost count after five? Not the point, anyways my brother's girlfriend asked if I was seeing anyone and I said no and somehow, I managed to bring my ex back into it and… I almost told her what I did to him. I can't say that to anyone, ever. It's too horrible. I only told the police when it happened and that's it. I've never told anyone else the exact details of what happened and… It's killing me, Murphy, it's killing me. I can't do this anymore! I need to kill myself before I tell someone!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Murphy exclaimed. "You don't have to go that far! Why can't you tell someone? That has to be a better option to killing yourself!"

"Who can I talk to?" Ellie sobbed. "I don't want to place this burden on my family! Therapy doesn't do shit! I have no friends! There's literally no one in this world I can talk to about this!"

"You can talk to me!" Ellie looked up at him, surprised. "I'll listen. No matter how horrible it is, I'll listen. I promise you that."

"Are you sure?" Ellie's words were small and hesitant. "Because I've got to tell you, what happened to me was pretty fucked up. I… I don't want to put that burden on you. Just knowing what happened… It's almost as bad as having experienced it for yourself."

"Trust me," Murphy said. "I've seen some pretty fucked up shit happen right before my eyes. Whatever you must tell me, it's not going to upset me."

"Alright," she said. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

 **Thursday, March 23rd, 2000**

Ellie gripped the edge of her seat with white knuckles. They had been driving around for hours. Ellie wasn't even sure of where they were anymore. At first, she thought Anthony was going to take her to Logan Airport like he had originally planned. However, instead he just drove in circles around Newton, Brookline, and now Boston. Ellie didn't ask where they were going. She was afraid to speak up at all. At any second, Anthony could decide that he didn't need her anymore and that would be the end for her. His hand occasionally went to the pistol holstered at his side, but then he'd pull it away quickly and go back to paying attention to the road. Every time he did that, Ellie's breathing stopped.

 _Please just let it end now,_ she thought repeatedly. _Please just let it end now. Please just let it end now. Please just let it end now._

The sky slowly faded from the bright blue of afternoon, to the faded tones of the evening and into the dead of night. Anthony never stopped the car once. Ellie thought they were going to run out of gas before they made it to wherever it was he was taking her. The streetlights had been on for a good, long time when Anthony pulled into an abandoned parking lot.

Ellie immediately recognized the area as Quincy Quarries. It was a popular spot in the area for kids to get drunk and make a bunch of decisions they'd regret, such as doing a backflip off one of the jagged rocks that lined the Quarries and ending up impaling themselves on an unseen telephone pole that was sunken beneath the waters below. Recently the Quarries had been closed. As part of the Big Dig, the City of Boston had decided to use the dirt they dug out of the spaces for the tunnels and use it to fill in the largest and most deadly of the lakes in the Quarries. As such, the Quarries were closed to the public until the lake had fully been filled in. That didn't stop Anthony from driving around the big, wooden "do not enter" sign.

After pulling into the parking lot, Anthony immediately turned the car off, pulling the keys out of the ignition.

"Get out," he said.

"What?" Ellie could feel her heart sinking down into a bottomless pit. Anthony grabbed her by the hair, opened his door, and started pulling her out of the truck.

"I said 'get out', bitch!" His growling reached a ferocious tone as he pulled her out of the car. "Shit, which part of that do you not understand?"

Ellie tried to kick, scream, punch, scratch… Anything she could do to try to get out of there. Anthony, however, kept subdued her until they were both sitting on the ground. Anthony held both of Ellie's wrists in one hand and used the other hand to press his gun to her forehead.

"You keep hitting me, I put a bullet in your brain," he said. "Do you understand that?" Ellie immediately stopped resisting and nodded her head in a quick, jerky fashion. "Good." He then let go of her wrists and Ellie staggered to catch her breath.

 _He's going to kill me! I just know it! He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me!_

Anthony let out an irritated breath.

"I can't believe you did that!" he hissed. "What is wrong with you? Why did you do that? Don't you love me? Don't you want to be with me?"

"I do," Ellie lied. "Believe me, I do, but… I want to live!"

"You were going to live!" Anthony said. "We were going to go to Jamaica! We were going to be together for the rest of our lives, and you just ruined that! That cunts probably called the cops! There's no way in hell we're getting through security at Logan now! How could you do this to me; to us? Is it because you have some Latin lover waiting for you in Spain? Is it? I know you fucking cheated on me bitch, so don't lie about it now!"

"I… I… I didn't…" Ellie stammered when she realized denial was probably going to get her killed on the spot. Her best option was to tell him what he wanted to hear, even if it wasn't true. "Okay… I admit it. I cheated on you. Happy?"

"I knew it!" Anthony flew into a standing position and started kicking up clouds of dirt. "I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! You cheated on me, you whore!" He then went from kicking the ground to kicking Ellie. "You low-down, conniving, sniveling, cunt!" He punctuated each of those words with a kick. Ellie tried to block him as best she could, but he still managed to get a couple of good blows into her ribs.

"Stop it!" she cried. "Jesus Christ, Anthony, just stop it!"

Anthony then grabbed her by the hair again and pulled her face as close to his as possible.

"How did it feel?" He snarled. "Fucking that other guy? Was it good? Was he better than me? Huh? Answer me bitch!"

"Screw you!" Ellie gathered up the bravery to spit. Anthony shoved her back down to the ground, hard.

"This isn't how it was supposed to be!" Anthony said as he started marching back and forth. "We were supposed to be together! I killed my parents for you! How could you do this to me?"

"No!" Ellie gritted her teeth. "You didn't kill your parents for me! I never wanted you to do that! You killed them for yourself! Don't blame me!" Anthony pulled the gun out of the holster, turned the safety off, and aimed it at her.

 _This is it._

"You better shut your damn mouth, bitch!" Ellie gulped as she made the next few words count.

"Not on your damn life."

The gun went off and Ellie dove sideways, narrowly missing catching the bullet with her head by nanometers. Moving fast as to not give time for Anthony to fire again, Ellie grabbed the arm holding the gun and pointed it skyward. The gun went off again, launching a bullet into the night as Anthony tried to sock Ellie with his free hand. All that accomplished was knocking them both to the ground.

Pinning his arm to the ground, Ellie kept hitting his arm to get him to let go of the gun. He eventually relinquished, but quickly reversed positions to grab Ellie from behind and put her in a chokehold. Ellie hit and scratched his arms as much as she could to try and get him to let her go, but it was all in vain.

"What'd you really think you could rush me, cunt?" He taunted. "Fat fucking chance! I'm going to kill you, bitch! I'm going to fucking kill you! You hear me, bitch! I'm going to- Argh!" Ellie was able to move her head enough to bite down on his arm.

As soon as he let her go, Ellie rushed to grab the gun. Even though she had never handled a deadly firearm before, she knew from TV and movies and one report she did on gun violence that she did for school once that there was a button you were supposed to press before you tried firing it. Desperate, she fumbled with the gun in the dark, trying to find the safety so she could threaten him.

 _That's all I'm doing, threatening him, right?_

Before she could figure out that answer Anthony began to charge at her, screaming the same uncreative obscenities that he had used throughout the night, as well as the entire course of their relationship. Ellie eventually found the button for the safety and turned the gun on Anthony. What happened next would shock her straight to the core.

She pulled the trigger.

Ellie let out a scream as she watched Anthony collapse to the ground, a big red stain forming on the front of his shirt. Ellie rushed over and tried to remember anything and everything Sky might have told her about gunshot wounds.

 _Try and staunch the bleeding; keep the patient alert and aware; whatever you do, do not try to remove the bullet! It will do more harm than good!_

Ellie pulled the cardigan she was wearing off and pressed it to Anthony's wound. For a while, Anthony seemed fine. (Well, if you consider murderous and totally psychotic to be fine.) He was spitting out obscenities and blaming her for everything. Ellie did her best to ignore him while she kept pressure on the wound. Then, it became clear that Anthony was struggling to breathe. Then blood started gushing out his mouth. Ellie tried to perform CPR, but between that and trying to keep pressure on the four-inch-deep hole in his abdominal cavity from spewing out drastic amounts of blood, she had her hands full.

After trying to keep him stable, an hour and thirty minutes later Anthony finally succumbed to his wounds. It wasn't for lack of trying. If either of them had owned a cellphone, Ellie would have been able to call 911 immediately, but neither of them did. She did her best with what she knew, but in the end, it wasn't enough.

Ellie sat there for several hours, frozen. She was unaware of the passage of time. She was unaffected by the cool temperatures of the night even though she was wearing a thin, sleeveless dress. All she could do was sit there, trapped in her repetitive thoughts.

 _This is all my fault. This is all my fault. This is all my fault. This is all my fault. This is all my fault._

When morning came, and the crews arrived to continue filling in the Quarries, they quickly took notice of the strange vehicle with a bullet hole in the side of it and the girl sitting as still as a statue as she pressed down on a dead man's stomach.

 _This is all my fault._

 **Thursday, November 22nd, 2001**

"It's not your fault," was the first thing that came out of Murphy's mouth when she finished telling the story.

"What?" Ellie could not believe that anyone would say such a thing to her, knowing exactly what she did and what kind of person she was.

"It's not your fault," Murphy repeated. "That prick was trying to **kill** you. You were right to do what you did. It's not your fault."

"How can you say that?" Ellie said. "I **killed** someone! I pulled the trigger! I let him bleed out! I let him die! This is all my fault! I broke one of the oldest rules known to man; 'thou shalt not kill'! Don't tell me otherwise!"

"Elle, it's self-freaking-defense!" Murphy said. "No one's going to blame you for that! You're not going to go to hell for that! You did what you had to, to survive! God will forgive you!"

"It's not God I'm worried about disapproving!" Ellie snapped. "I mean, that ship sailed a long time ago – I would imagine the first time I touched an Ouija board! It's my family! They always tell me, 'if something about that Anthony situation is bothering you, you can come talk to me' but I can't! I just can't! If I tried to tell them any of this, it would destroy them! It's bad enough they know I'm a murderer! If they knew all this… God, if they knew all this…"

"Elle," Murphy said with a sigh as he cupped her face with his hand. "Let me tell you something, you didn't do anything wrong by killing that man. He was an evil man and if you hadn't killed him, he would have killed you and then he would've gone on to hurt someone else. You did the right thing by killing him. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

"How…" Ellie tried to say through a heavy sob. "How can you say that? I killed someone! Do you even know what that's like? To take a life? To feel someone, take their dying breaths as your helpless to do anything? Do you?"

She noticed that Murphy hesitated for quite a bit before finally answering her question.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I know exactly how all of that feels."

"No," she said. "You don't have to take pity on me! I'm a terrible person, don't make it worse by **pitying** me!"

"I'm not pitting you," Murphy assured. "I know exactly what it's like because I've been there. I've killed people before."

"You're lying," Ellie said.

"I'm not," Murphy said. "I'm telling you the truth. If you want me to explain it to you, I'll explain it."

"Alright," she said with a nod of her head. "Let's hear it." Murphy took a deep breath before continuing.

He explained everything to her. He told her about the night at the bar when he and Connor got into a fight with those Russian mobsters. He told her how those same mobsters tracked them down to their apartment, handcuffed Connor to a toilet, and took Murphy outside to hill him. He told her how Connor ripped the toilet out from the floor and jumped off a roof to save his life. He explained his and Connor's calling and how they set out to cleanse the world of evil men. He told her how their friend Rocco joined them and his death at the hands of Giuseppe "Papa Joe" Yakavetta. How he and Connor watched helpless as they watched their friend choke out his dying words. How they met their father and the final confrontation with Papa Joe in the courtroom, ending in the mobster's execution and earning them the title of "the Saints of South Boston" in the process.

Ellie sat there for a while, not saying anything. Her face gave away no indication of what she was feeling. Murphy's hand was still cupping her face and he rubbed his finger across her cheek to comfort her.

"What are you thinking?" he finally asked.

"I'm thinking five drinks wasn't enough." She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes together hard. Murphy retracted his hand. "Shit."

"Should I take that to mean you don't believe me?" he asked.

"No," she said. "No, I believe you. That fucking story's so outrageous that it must be real. Just… You kill people."

"Yes," Murphy said.

"You kill people, as a job." The incredulous look on her face emphasized her point.

"Not exactly," Murphy said. "If the dirt bags happen to have money on them when they die… Let's just say Connor and I help ourselves."

"And you're happy with this?" Ellie questioned. "You're fine with being a murderer; playing judge, jury, and executioner for everyone without regard to yourself? I mean, you've taken so many lives… I've only taken one and it eats at me every day, how do you live with it?"

"I don't," he said. "I just keep telling myself that I'm doing God's work; that I'm doing it for every single person in this city who wakes up every morning not knowing whether they're going to get robbed or raped or killed; that I'm doing it for Connor; that I'm doing it for Rocco… I don't want Roc's death to be in vain. He believed in our cause. His last words to us were 'don't ever stop', and I don't intend to. Not now, but… There are things that I regret. There are times when I question myself, that I think I'm a bad person… At the end of the day, though, all that matters are that there are a few fewer scumbags in the world trying to hurt innocent people. That makes it all worth it to me."

Ellie was silent again as she contemplated his words.

"I wish I was at that point," she said. "Where I could actually be happy despite what I've done."

"Trust me," Murphy said. "You're not alone in this. For a lot of people, it's better to be fake and happy than real and miserable." Ellie nodded in agreement.

"So," she said. "Since I'm too drunk to drive and I'm assuming you are as well given the smell that's coming off you, why don't we indulge in a traditional Thanksgiving meal of microwave popcorn and warm apple juice and enjoy a showing of _the Princess Bride_ seeing as it's the only VHS I have now."

"What about your roommate?" Murphy asked.

"Oh, she stormed out when I showed up crying," Ellie said. "She said something about 'not wanting to deal with this shit today' and went to whatever girl she's banging this weeks' house."

"Alright, then," Murphy said. "Seeing as there's no chance of being interrupted, that sounds wonderful." A huge grin spread out on Ellie's face.

"You make the popcorn, I get the movie ready?" She asked.

"That sounds like a deal," Murphy said.

* * *

 **The short version is I was babysitting all day and I didn't get any time to post this until right now at 10:58 pm, meaning I just barely made it on time. I'm feeling sick and tired so the extended author's note is going to have to wait until tomorrow. Sorry about that.**

 **Remember kids, cutting it close is better than not making it at all.**

* * *

 **Originally posted to FFN on 5/5/18.**


	12. I'm Standing in Front of You

**So, here we are at the end...**

* * *

 **Friday, November 23rd, 2001**

It had been hours, days, weeks, months, years… He wasn't sure anymore, but it had been quite a long time and no matter how much he walked, it didn't seem like he was really going anywhere. The sand was no longer attempting to restrain him, but the dullness of his surroundings made it seem like he was getting nowhere fast. The drop of water was still resting safely in the palm of his hand. He hadn't let it spill, he hadn't let it drain, he just continued walking the desert aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do with it.

He was about to give up. With no direction, no understanding, and no way of knowing what the hell he was doing, Murphy was going to turn his hand over and let the water fall to the ground. After all, if she wasn't going to tell him what he was supposed to do, he might as well give up. Hey, that could have been what she wanted him to do in the first place. He couldn't tell. He wasn't a mind reader.

That was when he found her again. She wasn't standing at a distance this time. He just turned his head left and saw her sitting there on a rock with her back to him. He opened his mouth to say something, but she spoke before he could speak up.

"If you're thinking about throwing that water on the ground, don't. That's not why I gave it to you."

"Then why did you give it to me?" He asked. "I don't get what the point of all of this is?"

"A point?" she said. "You think there's a point to all of this?"

"Well, yeah," Murphy said. "I mean, there's a point to everything, isn't there?" He heard her let out an exasperated sigh.

"Yes," she said. "I guess there is."

"So why are you being so evasive as the point to all of this?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said. "this is **your** subconscious. Why don't you figure it out?"

"You're the one who gave me the water and told me to figure it out." Murphy was getting aggravated at this point.

"No, I just said 'don't drop it', which was what you were specifically about to do," she said.

"Then what am I supposed to do with it?" Murphy questioned.

"You aren't supposed to drop it," was all she could give as a response.

"That's it?" Murphy said.

"What did you expect?" She threw her hands to the side in aggravation. "The meaning of life? The secret to happiness? I mean, what were you expecting to gain from all of this?"

"Why we had to come back to Boston!" That wasn't what she was expecting to hear. "…The first dream I had, you were telling me that we… That I needed to come back to Boston. Why was that?"

"So, you could learn a lesson," she said.

"Oh yeah?" Murphy said. "What kind of lesson do I need to fucking learn?"

"Not to do everything your dreams tell you to do." Murphy scoffed at that. "I'm serious!"

"So, what," Murphy said. "Because that first dream told me to go to Boston, I shouldn't have done it? I was having that dream every fucking night! It was driving me up the fucking wall! I couldn't figure out what it meant and when I finally figured out the meaning…"

"You mean you finally gave it a meaning," she said.

"What?" Murphy's brow furrowed in confusion. She sighed again.

"Like anything else in life, dreams only carry the meaning you give them," she said. "You decided that the dream meant that you and Connor should go back to Boston, so you went back to Boston. That's it. There's no hidden deep meaning to all of this. The only meaning it has is the one you give to it. That's all."

"But what about the water?" Murphy said. "After that first dream, you gave me a drop of water and told me not to drop it. Certainly, that has a meaning now, doesn't it?"

"Sure, it does," she said. "What do you think it is?"

"That I shouldn't give up until Ellie tells me what happened to her?" Murphy guessed.

"You didn't know she was hiding something then," she pointed out. "But whatever you say… It's not my dream, after all." She then got up from the rock and started walking away. Murphy followed her.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

"Nowhere," she said. "Everywhere. Technically, I don't exist, so I can't really go anywhere, so it's a matter of perspective."

"Matter of perspective, my ass!" Murphy said. "You just don't want to have this conversation with me."

"Don't you mean you don't want to have a conversation with yourself?" she said. "For the thousandth time, I'm a figment of your subconscious imagination. If anyone here is avoiding anything, you are."

"I'm not avoiding anything!" He shouted. "You are!" She then turned around and Murphy saw a face he wasn't expecting to see.

"I am you!" Ellie shouted back at him. "So why don't you just take the damn drop of water and decide what to do with it already!" Murphy didn't say anything. He just watched as she turned back around and stomped off into the desert.

Murphy stood there for a good long time, staring at the spot where her figure disappeared. Eventually, he turned his attention to the drop of water in his hand, staring at it, pondering it, and wondering what the best thing to do with it would be.

 _I think I'll keep it,_ he thought. _Hold on to it forever. Not let anyone touch it, protect it. It's the least I could do after the hell I went through trying to figure out how to get it and what to do with it._

* * *

Murphy woke up feeling rested and comfortable. Once again, he forgot for a second that he wasn't at home with Connor but quickly realized where he was and what he had been doing the night before when he found that he was hugging a half-eaten bowl of (probably stale by this point) microwave popcorn. He and Ellie were watching a movie, but he got bored and fell asleep less than fifteen minutes into it. He probably should have expected that from a movie titled _the Princess Bride_ , but then again, it was his only option, so what was he going to do?

Turning over to his right, he saw Ellie in the middle of trying to figure out what to do with the rat's nest she created last night. She was probably going to want to get to a professional hair salon ASAP. All the pieces of hair were now different lengths and Murphy wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have to shave it all off and start from scratch. He hoped that wasn't how it was going to go.

 _She had such nice hair. Why did she have to cut it?_

At that point, Ellie looked over and noticed that Murphy had woken up. She put her hairbrush back down on a shelf underneath the bunk.

"Hey," she said. "You're finally up. Thank God, I was starting to think I was going to have to start composing a Dear John letter."

"'It's not you, it's me,'" Murphy said sleepily. "Was that the line you were thinking of starting off with?"

"Yup," Ellie said, popping the "p". "Quickly followed by 'I'm sorry I must ditch you, but I need to find a Super Cuts with employees competent enough to fix the mess I made before I go home, and Lori flips the fuck out.'"

"Ah," he said. "So, you're leaving."

"Kind of have to," she said. "After that shit show I put on last night, I'll be lucky enough if Lori doesn't throttle me to death. Don't need her filing a missing person's report either. Then she'll kill me for real."

"You're not mad at me?" Ellie looked puzzled.

"No," she said. "Of course not. Why would I be?"

"No reason," Murphy said. "Just checking." Ellie shrugged it off.

"Whatever," she said. "As long as you're not mad at me, that's all that matters right?"

"Yeah…" Murphy was unsure of how to respond to that. He got up from the bed and stretched. "Guess I better get going then."

"Yeah." Ellie was quiet as Murphy walked over to the door and opened it. "Hey, Murphy." He stopped but didn't turn around to look at her. "About last night… Thank you for listening to me. You have no idea how long I've been carrying that around. It means the world to me that you listened. Also, I promise I won't tell anyone about you and Connor. I don't exactly agree with what you're doing, but… I know regardless, you're not going to stop. Even if you two became America's Most Wanted – which is doubtful given the current climate, but I digress – you wouldn't stop doing this and I'm not going to try to get you to stop. Besides, it's not really my secret to tell, is it?"

"Yeah," Murphy said. "Guess you're right there." He then turned to look back at her. "You take care of yourself, okay?"

"Right back at you," was the last thing he heard her say before he walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

 **Monday, November 26th, 2001**

Connor and Murphy were once again each enjoying a beer at McGinty's Pub. They were whispering plans for their next hit when Murphy saw a familiar face approaching their booth.

Her hair was much different now. It looked like the hairdressers did the best they could, but in the end, Ellie just couldn't pull it off. The bob they clearly had tried to cut it into probably would have looked nice if her hair wasn't so curly. Instead, it just looked like a big frizzy mess. Ellie tried the best she could with it, though, and she at least didn't look like a wildebeest that had escaped from the zoo. The outfit she picked out didn't look half bad either. Red tank top, black sweatshirt, and very tight blue jeans. To say he wasn't already having dirty thoughts would be very misleading.

"Hey guys," she said as she came over to their table. "Mind if I sit down?"

Murphy looked at Connor as if asking permission.

"Don't look at me," he said. "It's your call."

Murphy looked back over to Ellie who was gazing at him hopefully.

"Aye," he said. "Of course, you can sit down, lass." He scooched over so she could sit down next to him, looking at him appreciatively as she took a sip of her beer. She then smiled widely at him.

"Hey stranger," she said. "Nice seeing you again."

"You too." Murphy reflected her grin.

 _Yeah, I think I'll hold on to this one._

* * *

 **Yes, this is the end of the story. Don't worry I am going to write a sequel! ...Eventually. I kind of want to get a little more ahead of where I am with _My Head's Above the Rain and Roses_ right now. I just want to be sure I have enough chapters to keep regularly updating through July. Then I'll start working on the sequel to this.**

 **If you liked this story, please remember to review! Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited, followed, gave kudos, and commented! It really means a lot.**

 **Remember kids, while you're doing fine, there's some people and I who have a really tough time getting through this life, so excuse us while we sing to the sky!**

* * *

 **Originally posted to FFN on 5/13/18.**


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